


flood the gates (and burst the dams)

by thedragonsarecats



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anti-Magic Laws in United States of Auradon (Disney), Background Relationships, F/M, Fluff, For Want of a Nail, Hurt/Comfort, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Leader Uma, Neverland, Not Descendants 3 Complaint, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tremaine Family Drama, United States of Auradon (Disney) Is Not Perfect, Violence, but uma and harry still hug Like That because I say so, from the middle/end of d2 onwards, kind of, we're scrapping d3 almost entirely babey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25515082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedragonsarecats/pseuds/thedragonsarecats
Summary: There is no magic on the Isle of the Lost, but when Uma walks barefoot across the beach during low tide, the waves chase her heels and nip at her ankles.
Relationships: Ben & Uma (Disney: Descendants), Ben/Mal (Disney: Descendants), Evie & Jay & Mal & Carlos de Vil, Gil & Harry Hook & Uma, Harry Hook/Uma, Uma & Uma's Crew (Disney)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 121





	1. Do you believe?

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Mysterious Fathoms Below](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11997819) by [MissKate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissKate/pseuds/MissKate). 



> The inspiration taken from Mysterious Fathoms is all in Harry's parentage. 
> 
> chapter titles are gonna be from the lyrics to Walk on Water by Thirty Seconds to Mars
> 
> Enjoy!

There is no magic on the Isle of the Lost, but when Uma walks barefoot across the beach during low tide, the waves chase her heels and nip at her ankles. 

Uma is of the ocean; a cecaelia stuck on two legs and a sea witch out of water. She is a hurricane chained to land, a rising tsunami not allowed to crash, a whirlpool just waiting to form a maelstrom. She is powerful; suppressed. 

She’s never lived any other way. Born with an ache in her bones, an itch under her skin, and an eye for the endless sea that stretches past the Auradonian cost and over the horizon. The older generation, the first villains, her mother, are ebbed waves, captured and locked off from all their magic; unnaturally still waters. But Uma is different, a wave unable to fully form, buckling against her restraints with every breath; she is the bounce in the ocean, the sway of the ship, and  _ one day _ she will be powerful enough to crest and wash the barrier away with her. 

But until then, like attracts like and the sea cannot be contained or corralled anymore than the wild magic of Neverland. She meets Harry Hook when they’re children, her first friend and her first mate. He’s air to her water, in love with the ocean and obsessed with the skies. He knows the constellations hidden behind the Isle’s cloud of smog by heart, and sits in the tops of trees by the scraggly beach just to feel the sea salt stick to his skin and the wind in his hair. He’s a breeze that dances and anchors and hooks it’s fingers into hers with a wild smile that promises adventure. 

He’s her first friend, but he is isn’t her best friend until after Mal, who’s fae and dragon; earth and fire; her opposites. Fire is passionate, burning, short lived; it consumes and kills just as quickly as it gives. Water is patient, slow, stubborn; it wears away and douses and drowns and simply does not care in the ways of fire. Earth is stubborn too, long and lasting and the true antagonist to water because whenever they meet it’s a question of who will outlast the other. But fire and water bring and sustain life. But every ship must dock and every plant needs rain. But the elements work in harmony, so Uma wonders if she and Mal can too.

They cannot. 

Mal falls off the docks, into the bay, and Uma  _ laughs _ . But then one minute passes, and two, and Uma suddenly remembers that Mal isn’t Harry, isn’t air, but  _ fire _ and fire is drowned out just as easily as stones sink. The ocean does not know how to be kind or care but Uma is and Uma does, and she’s about to dive in when—shrimp. 

The rotten fish wash out but the smell doesn’t and Mal’s already spread the nickname across the docks and into town, green eyes glowing and smirk sharp. Uma sits on the beach and lets the water soak her, closes her eyes and let’s the tears fall because her mother had been  _ right _ when she told Uma not to trust the fae. Rage storms and whirls in her chest at the betrayal, destructive and deadly, but it is a storm as suppressed as her magic. Maleficent rules the Isle and for all she as cruel as Ursula she protects her daughter in all the ways Uma’s mother doesn’t. Revenge will never truly end up in her grasp so Uma puts down her anchor and decides to wait the worst of it out. Her eyes ache and her head is heavy but she doesn’t lift it until hours pass, despite the smell in her braids, until the sun is setting over Auradon and a few measly rays have stretched far enough to alight the ocean in iridescent gold. 

She hears footsteps crunching against splintered rocks and sand until they come to a stop by her side. Hears the shifts as the figure sits and manages to sprawl only inches away, the clink of glass charms threaded through a leather cord, and there’s only one person on the Isle who would know to find her in the corner of this pathetic excuse for a beach and it isn’t Mal.

“I was gonna come find ye, when I heard,” Harry Hook tells her, tone casual but words dangerous. He’s six and she’s seven but childhood on the Isle is not comprised of naivete, “Or stab Mal, if I saw her first.” He laughs, harsh, and awful reminiscent of his father. He’s been doing that more lately, ever since his mom died, letting his eyes flare manic and his grin go wild. It scares some of the other children, puts even a few of the adults on edge, but not Uma. Something nudges into her shoulder and she glances up through her braids to see Harry bumping a mason jar against her, “But I thought you might want this. Took me a while to nick it, Anatasia was guarding the shelves something mad.” 

Silently, Uma wraps her hand over Harry’s and pulls the jar from his grasp. She tucks her knees up tighter into her chest as she screws open the lid. She raises it to her nose, suspicious, and sniffs.  _ Oh. _

“Shampoo,” She says, and her voice determinedly does not wobble. Harry tucks his hands behind his head, pretends to be unaffected, but even in the lowlight she can see the smile he tries to hide. The nice smelling kind she and most of the Isle can’t afford. She hesitates for a moment, still burned, still bruised, but. The wind doesn’t know loyalty or love, and even this young with only a year of friendship tucked under her belt with the other boy, Uma knows that Harry is so wrapped up in both he’s a storm at sea that’ll never come to shore. Fire knows no mercy, and earth knows no favoritism, but Harry chooses to be the wind in her sails and Uma is proof that the ocean plays favorites. She stands abruptly, and Harry’s eyes follow her instinctively, “Come back to the Shoppe with me,” She orders, “And help me undo my braids.” 

He makes his own way to his feet because Uma does not offer a hand and Harry does not ask for one. But his cheeks stretch ever so slightly with a smile, and Uma digs short nails into the jar—the only gift she’s ever been given—and they stand on the beach together. Kids who still over articulate their words and have a roundness to their faces that hunger has not yet dulled. Uma leads the way off the beach; Harry follows. The sun has set but something has just begun.

Like attracts like, and Neverland is an island surrounded by the sea. 

She grows older and gathers her crew. Gil doesn’t have an ounce of magic in his blood, but he doesn’t have his father’s inclination for Earth, either. The other Gaston kids hunt and strut through life with both feet on the ground and heads so thick they might as well be solid stone, but Gil walks the island with light feet and an attention span that blows with the wind. He’s loyal, but he drifts, wandered away for a chunk of their childhood before ending back up as the second mate and member of her crew. Gil is air and she soon finds that she gets along with that element best; two steps aside from water and the power that helps push a ship across the sea. 

She gets her cousin Jonas, wicked with a dagger, who sits with her on the docks as they dip their feet into polluted waters. She gets Desiree, small and fierce, who stands on rooftops and nails King Beast’s poster in the eye from thirty-six feet away with her crossbow. She gets Gonzo, quiet but deadly, and with a secret talent for catching fish that Uma didn’t know about until seven months in. She surrounds herself with water and air, and even fire—Bonnie throws molotov cocktails at Mal whenever their gangs crash and cuts off all her hair in case the fae is hankering to repeat history. 

No earth, though, because pirates live on boats even if her crew is stuck on land. No earth, because Gil might be air but he’s grounded in a way Desiree isn’t and Harry can’t be, and she trusts it’s enough for her crew. Fire, because Uma has never been afraid of being burned, but no Earth because Uma refuses to let her crew, her  _ ship _ when she gets one, run aground. 

(She refuses to make the same mistakes again; she is not her Mother.) 

There is no magic on the Isle of the Lost, but when Hook hosts a race for the  _ Lost Revenge _ , she recruits Harry as her first mate, Gil as her second, and beats out all the villains, young and old, and wins the ship,  _ her  _ ship, at fourteen. The wind blows in their favor and the waves lap loud in her ears, and she  _ wins.  _ She wins, and Gil bumps their shoulders together with unholy glee and she crosses her fingers over Harry’s hook, and when the crowd disperses and it’s just her and her crew running their hands over the wood and the riggings Harry grins, eyes alight, and spins her around in a hug so ridiculous and  _ wonderful _ she laughs instead of jabbing him between the ribs. 

She moves her stuff into the Captain’s cabin and out of the apartment above the Chippe Shop, and her crew is short to follow. She still takes shifts at her mother’s restaurant, coerced into midnight doubles and scrubbing dishes, but she goes home to the docks and falls asleep to the rocking of  _ Lost Revenge _ on water and feels her soul steady to weather the storm.

She dreams of the ocean. Clear blues and vibrant greens streaked in white foam and glittering light; violent waves as dark as the clouds that form overhead, and taller than any building on the isle crashing into cliffs and against the sides of ships; her and her crew and her ship, sailing free amongst it all. 

Uma can’t breathe when she wakes up, clutching her chest in pain in the endless seconds before she remembers that she breathes air. She wonders if this is what drowning feels like, and has a sudden, desperate urge to ask Harry if the rush of the blood in her ears and the choking in her throat as her vision whites out, dissolves, before her chest itches and she  _ inhales _ —if that’s what drowning if like. If that’s what he felt the time Ginny Gothel and one of Gil’s older brothers had caught him unaware and held his head underwater until Harriet chased them off with her sword and their father’s smile, just in reverse. 

Only, she supposes, as she stumbles through her cabin to buckle the sword around her waist, Uma is a cecaelia stuck on two legs and her lungs may have been born for water but they adapt as readily to air. Harry wouldn’t have been so lucky, had Harriet not come along. 

Harry’s cabin is right next to hers but she knows he’ll be exactly where she left him the night before, camped out in the crow’s nest for the second day in a row, eyeliner smudged by the spray of seawater and bags under his eyes. 

The docks are as quiet as they ever get in the awkward hour between midnight looting and dawn, and beyond Gil, who waves brightly at her from where he’s manning his guard shift, none of her crew is up or arrived. She climbs the netting with practiced ease, lets the rope catch against the heel of her boot and pulls herself up over the edge of the crow’s nest until her back is pressed against the ship’s mast and her shoulder bumps Harry’s.

“Mornin’, Captain,” Harry greets, voice quiet and muffled by exhaustion. He runs his fingers through his hair and it sticks up on all ends. It would be endearing, if that sort of thing were allowed on the Isle. It isn’t, so Uma turns her gaze on the strip of sky visible from their position and asks what drowning feels like. 

He stares at her, and she stares back until Harry rolls his shoulders, bumping against hers in the process, and speaks of fear: of hands pressing him down, lungs straining, and water burning down his throat once his chest spasmed and he sucked in a long, desperate breath, only to find that the air wasn’t there. Fear rules the Isle, but not Harry: even after hours of vomiting up salt water and acid bile into a bucket, he jumped right into a river with her two weeks later with a grin after declaring with all the confidence of a ten year old,  _ Just because Ginny Gothel cares enough to kill me, doesn’t mean the water does!  _

Fear bound everyone on the Isle, and Harry was freest from it’s restraints. Not free—no one was, Uma knew, even in Auradon, because if  _ they _ had been free from fear she wouldn’t have grown up on this trash pile in the  _ first _ place—but everyone knew that, like most villain kids, Harry Hook had feared and revered his father in equal measure for most of his life, as clearly exemplified by the hook he carried in his hand and a suspiciously similar scar that curved over his shoulder. But that lack of fear towards everything else—it made him a wild card. Something dangerous, uncontrollable. 

Harry tells her about drowning with a spark in his eyes and a twist to his smile. He fiddles with his hook in his lap, and makes eye contact the whole time. When he’s done his shoulders slump back and exhaustion wraps back around his wrists, weighs down his eyelids until his gaze is half open and lidded, still staring at her with a kind of worship that would make anyone else uncomfortable. 

She stares right back at him, shoulders brushing and faces only inches away, “When I woke up,” Uma tells him, “I couldn’t breathe. It was like I forgot how to take in air, or never knew in the first place.” It’s an explanation, one he deserves, and one she wouldn’t give to anyone else except maybe Gil or her cousin. But what she says next isn’t an explanation, but an offer, “I dreamt of the ocean. Not what we have here but what they have—” She jerks her chin to the side, “—out there.” 

She offers. A deal perhaps not worthy of her sea-witch nature, but one worthy of their friendship and all they’ve managed to mean to each other. It’s not a bone quill and a rolled parchment contract, but two warm shoulders pressed against each other in the hours before dawn, when only their proximity lets them barely see each other in the low light without stars. Uma offers a hand, and Harry takes it.

He sets his hook down between them, and the metal clinks quietly against wood, “My Mum…” He trailed, then ducks his gaze. One hand lays on the floor of the crow’s nest, but the other he’s tangled around the brown leather cord that’s hung around his neck since they were kids. The glass charms, two small cylinders painted black, click against each other. Uma doesn’t remember much about Harry’s mother—they’d been friends for only a handful of months before she’d died—but Uma knew those old charms were hers, and that Harry had never taken them off. 

“The anniversary isn’t for a few months.” Uma says, and her birthday was another few months passed. Harry had loved his Mom with all his heart, and she had loved him back. It was incredibly enviable and incredibly tragic; the older Harry got the more those memories turned into barely there fog that disappeared as soon as he reached it. 

“Aye,” Harry said, thumb rubbing against one of the identical charms, “That’s not—” He looks at a loss for words, and it’s so not like him, boisterous and almost as unfiltered as Gil, that she has to hold back the urge to grab his hand and squeeze. Harry sighs, “Uma,” He says, like a prayer, and it steadies him. He meets her gaze heavily, “Do you know why my Mum was sent to the Isle of the Lost.”

Uma startles, because, “No,” She admits, “You never said.” And she had never thought about it, not really. Most inhabitants of the Isle weren’t the Big Bads Auradon had made them out to be—the true outliers were people like her Mother and his Father, few, in number but dominating and powerful—but the sort of common criminal and henchmen that weren’t worth remembering. Uma had always assumed, in the absent sort of way, that she had been apart of Hook’s crew  _ before _ . She had never given Harry’s mother much thought in that way.

But perhaps she should. Kids on the Isle only made a name for themselves if their parents had made that name first: she was _Uma,_ _daughter of Ursula,_ and he was _Harry, son of Hook,_ and neither of them could afford to be anything else. Their parents names barely protected them (not like Mal), but people saw the golden shell around her neck and the silver hook in Harry’s hand and remembered their parents’ cruelty before they had made enough of a reputation to get the Isle to know their own. But while Harry may have been Hook’s only son, it was Harriet who was his successor, in the same way Uma was Ursula’s. As Water as their Father, but twice as clever and just as dangerous. 

Harry was his Mother’s successor, her legacy, all that remained of her on the Isle was Harry’s laugh and style with a sword. The air in his heart. Uma remembers, vaguely, visiting the Jolly Roger with Harry when they first became friends. Remembers the way his Mom had half-hung off the rigging to untangle the nets with practiced ease, and climbed up the masts with a needle between her teeth to repair the rips in the sail. Remembers how she spun when she sparred with Hook, blue coattails flaring, called him James and knocked his obnoxious feathered hat off with a laugh. Remembered how she’d  _ hugged _ Harry and smiled at Uma with glass charms hanging from her throat.

Light on her feet, but a whirlwind with a rapier, she’d half-raised Harriet even though the girl wasn’t her own and had cared for Callista-Jane in the same way, those scant few years she’d been able to. Kind, in a way people could barely afford to be, but vicious and unforgiving and as exactly unafraid as Harry was. 

Uma hadn’t known why Harry’s Mom had been sent to the Isle. She hadn’t even known the woman’s name.

“She was an example,” Harry says, bitter, “She’d—they’d forgiven her, for her crime years ago.  _ Theft,” _ He scoffed, because Aladdin had done the same and became a prince, “She’d returned what she’d stolen. Mum never talked about it, but once she was gone and Dad got drinking…” Harry bit his lip, but his eyes were angry instead of sad, “It was how they met. It’s how the crew knew her.” He grins suddenly, manic, “Dad used to be her first mate. He’d been a  _ cabin boy  _ before her.” 

Uma takes a sharp intake of breath. It hisses through her teeth and her eyes go wide. Harry nods, and laughs, and she waits until it’s turned into a grin slapped on his skin. 

“It was a trick,” Harry continues, jerking one hand up to wave, “Dad’s not loyal to anyone but himself. He trapped her in a lantern and tossed her into the ocean. She never forgave him, even when they managed to toss him in ‘ere…” Harry trails, breaks his eyes away from her and stretches his neck up until he’s staring at a point in the smog covered sky, “Neverland’s got so much magic it bleeds into the sea itself. And Beast wanted to leave magic in the past. Move on.” Harry looks back at her with a grin, “Neverland didn’t care much, when it was annexed into Auradon. But then they plucked Mum from Pixie Hollow and suddenly her only allies were the Jolly Roger.” He shrugs, but there’s something vulnerable in his eyes, something raw, “Dad cried when she died. Never thought he could.” 

“Harry…” Uma says, voice half hoarse. She wants to say a million things, feels a vat of emotion bubbling up inside her chest and boiling over. The surprise is what gets her though, because like recognizes like and Uma had known Mal was a fae from the moment she met her but never once noticed the magic in her best friend’s blood and just has to ask, “Why?”

Why not tell her before, why tell her  _ now _ , why couldn’t she tell, why couldn’t  _ anyone _ tell—because even if Uma hadn’t noticed  _ someone _ should’ve. 

“Mum never talked about her old life,” Harry tells her, and the charms chime together again, “She would’ve never talked about what she was if it wasn’t in my blood.”

“Magic,” Uma says, and Harry nods.

“Magic,” He agrees, “But it’s small. Like one leaf in a tree changing colors or a one flower protected by frost. It’s supposed to go unnoticed. Besides” He says, oddly poetic, as he untangles his right hand and uses one finger to stretch the leather cord in her direction until the glass charms are dangling half over her shoulder. “It doesn’t even work without this.”

“Without—” Uma reaches out to touch the charms, question on the tip of her tongue but her fingers brush black painted glass and spark like static. It’s like a whirlwind, a tornado, a windstorm at the edges of her peripheral. It’s the way the wind blows heavy in the summer and harsh in the winter, dancing with leaves in the fall and flowers in the spring. Ursula’s necklace grows warm over her chest, “ _ Oh.” _

“Pixie dust,” Harry says, shuffling closer to her so that she can hold both in her palm and marvel at the warmth. They end up sitting across from each other, cross legged with their knees bumping the side of the crowsnest and foreheads pressed together. It’s the closest thing to magic she’s ever felt, her own is tucked away, dulled and suppressed before she was even born, and she’s seen Mal and her Mother manage to light up their eyes but this isn’t a parlor trick, this is  _ real _ .  __ “They sent it with her. It can’t—she couldn’t fly with it, but it was enough, for a while.”

“Enough?” Uma asks, thoughtless, before it hits her so hard she feels like her chest is bruised. They’re close enough, barely inches away, that Harry can catch the way her eyes briefly flare in recognition and she can see the way his smile, soft for a moment, stretches to sardonic. “She—”

“‘Born of laughter, born of cheer, happiness has brought you here,’” Harry quips, in a melodic rhyme that makes her think he didn’t just make it up for fun, “Never Fairies were born of laughter and air, but Mum always said they were held together by belief and magic.”

There is no magic on the Isle of the Lost.

Uma’s fist closes around the charms—around the tiny  _ vials _ of Pixie Dust—and lets the glass dig painfully into her palms, and brings her other hand up to grasp Harry’s free hand tightly. 

“You’re half-fairy,” She says, voice level. 

“She lasted almost ten years,” Harry replies, and twists his left and and her right until their fingers are laced together.

“So you have twenty if we’re lucky,” Uma shoots back, and Harry looks grim because they never are. Says  _ we’re _ because he’s the most loyal friend she’s ever had, and damn her if she doesn’t return that loyalty with some of her own. The Pixie Dust pulses like a heartbeat in her hand, warm and steady and constant. It’s a heavy weight, and for all Harry’s entrusted his life and loyalty in her for years she knows this is different. 

“So I die young,” Harry says, nonchalantly, because their whole lives have been a tragedy and what’s one more? “So I don’t have wings, so the closest I’ll ever get to flying is sitting up here and waiting for the wind to ease the itch under my skin. It’s no more than most of the kids here will ever get.” 

“It’s less than we deserve,” Uma insists, squeezing his fingers tight, “Even though it’s what we’ve all been given. But,” She says, pulls her forehead back from Harry’s and presses the vials against his chest, heartbeat to heartbeat, “We’re pirates. We take what we want, and what we want is what we deserve, our birthright. Freedom.” She lets go of the glass, watches it hang down the front of Harry’s tattered tanktop and how his right hand wraps around them as soon as her fingers fall. He looks at her, pale eyes full of faith, and Uma know exactly how precious it is, “The wind will blow our way Harry. We’ll ride with the tide.”

They end up watching the sunrise together, backs pressed against the masts and hands still tangled despite their better Isle instincts. Uma watches light creep over the strip of horizon available over the top of the crow’s nest and the bottom of the smog cloud while Harry sleeps, passed out minutes after their conversation, cheek pressed against her shoulder as she leans her head against his. 

His hand is warm in her’s, with identical calluses rough against the skin from holding a sword, and the beads of his bracelets are cool against her wrist. It’s a familiar weight, one they’ve been able to indulge in during the months since they’ve won  _ Lost Revenge _ , and Uma imagines the fingers still curled around hers as limp and cold for a long moment.

Uma’s got the blood of the gods running through her veins but she could get shanked in the street or sick on the ship and die as easily as any of the mortals Ursula had spent centuries outliving. The knowledge that every day could be her last has been as steady presence in the back of her head since she was young; constant, accepted, unfair. 

But looking at Harry, and knowing with an undeniable, gut-wrenching certainty that Beast had killed his Mom to send a message and would kill him too, was different. Looking at Harry and knowing that every second he spent in the barrier was a slow execution with a date set in six years, was different. It was a kind of rage that churned her gut and left her eyes burning, made her want to rip the Isle stone from stone and  _ bury _ the royal family in it the blood soaked rubble.

Uma closed her eyes. The docks were beginning to wake up around them, scuffles starting and stalls opening, crews arriving and dawn rising. Before long she would have to shake Harry awake. Untangle their fingers and hand him his hook, climb down the rigging with him at her side and walk back to their cabins with Gil in between them because his shift at watch was due to end soon. Drop their third off in the common quarters to wake the others up while Uma dressed properly for the day and Harry relined his eyes in dark kohl to hide his bags. Before long this moment of relative peace would end. 

Before long the minutes would slip through her fingers, coil into years, and splash down, desolate at her feet. Before long, Harry Hook would die, and Uma would be left alone on the Isle, because she had Gil, had her crew, but Harry had been the one positive constant in her life since she was six, and now she finds that the winds are doomed to change. 

Uma has spent a life riding against a tide determined to drown her, but even if her head goes underwater in her lungs won’t hurt anymore than they would in air. If the winds will change she’ll simply adjust her sails.

Uma rubs her thumb against Harry’s, listens to his soft breathing, and watches the rise and fall of his chest; she doesn’t know what she’ll do if she loses him to this. Survive, certainly. Live, of course. But beyond that it feels like an awful pit in her stomach, different than when she was eight years old and had to stitch up the cut from his Father’s hook that’s still scarred across his shoulder. She had felt rage then, so much so that it took work to keep her hands from shaking when each puncture of the needle had Harry’s arms tensing from a barely concealed grimace, but it had also been accompanied by a feeling of distinct hopelessness because her best friend had been hurt and she couldn’t have stopped it. 

But the pit’s that opened up is more than just helplessness because it’s  _ dread _ . It’s a problem with no clear cut solution—this isn’t a wound Uma can close with sterilized thread and a steady hand. 

No matter what she does there’s no guarantee it’ll work; no guarantee Harry will live past twenty, die from any other sort of Isle mundanity when he’s not still a teenager, because there _is_ _no magic on the Isle of the Lost_ and what managed to make its way through wasn’t enough for Harry’s mom, so it won’t be enough for him. Belief can bring a fairy back from death, but Harry’s mom had the crew of the Jolly Roger and the whole Hook family, so Uma knows as much as it grates what she and her crew can offer will barely stave it off.

It’s a simple enough solution, when she thinks about it. The kind that needs time Harry almost certainly doesn’t have. Power and leverage Uma still needs to obtain. Waves wearing away at a cliff face for years until the structure crumbles, falls, gives way. But Harry’s breath is warm against her neck, and his hand fits in hers and Uma knows she would do this for any member of her crew—for Gil, for Jonas, for Desiree—but for Harry it’s different. 

Uma does not love in the way of fire, does not burn with passion and let it consume her from the inside out; Uma’s love is a constant, as powerful and uncontained as the tides. It is the wave that follows her up the beach, the rock of her ship in the storm, the ocean kissing the horizon at the edges of the sky. It’s constant, comforting, everpresent. It has the potential to overwhelm, to drown, to kill, but Uma’s cheek is pressed into Harry’s sweat-strewn hair, and she lets the wave of affection lap in her chest. 

The Isle of the Lost does not allow soft things like love to be displayed and neither does Uma; but she knows that if she does not allow herself to feel affection for her crew —her  _ friends,  _ perhaps the closest goddamn thing she’s ever had to  _ family _ —in the privacy of moments like these, than she will forget her roots. What she stands for. 

Because she is not Mal, who would rule this Isle as a Queen, alone; she is a Captain, with a crew she trusts to pillage and plunder and protect in her name.

She reaches her free hand, carefully, to brush over the glass charms that hold Harry’s life like his mother’s before him. Feels the heat, the power, the pulse. Harry had as good as placed his heart into her hand and trusted her not to crush the glass in her palm or rip the cord from his neck. No wonder he could sleep like he hadn’t in days when she offered her shoulder until the sun rose because she’s as close to safe as he can get on the Isle and him for her as well. 

There is no magic on the Isle of the Lost, so Uma will just have to leave. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a sucker for soft!Huma, can you tell? 
> 
> (I'm also a sucker for the symmetry of Uma's greatest enemy and her greatest friend both being half fairy because the Parallels are just *chef's kiss* beautiful and entirely accidental on my behalf)
> 
> Anyways, please leave a comment telling me what you think or if you just wanna talk Descendants because I am always up for that and I have So Many Opinions (particularly on how Uma deserves better every second she is on or off screen). 
> 
> you can also message me on tumblr!


	2. Listen up, hear the patriot shout: "Times are changing!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"When you brought Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay to Auradon... that's as mad as I've ever been in my life." ___
> 
> _  
> _Or: Descendants One from Uma's POV.__  
> 

There is no magic on the Isle of the Lost, but Uma’s first mate wears two glass charms of pixie dust around a leather cord.

It’s a reminder, whether she’s on her ship or running shifts in the Shoppe, that when the charms collide like chiming bells they toll the fact that each day on this Isle is one closer to Harry’s last. 

A reminder, that, after two years she still hasn’t escaped the Isle. Not when she dove into the murky waters of Goblin Wharf in an attempt to slide through the barrier when the barge ships came in. Not when she, Bonnie, and even Callista Jane tried on half a dozen unsuccessful attempts to stow away on or in one, and only got bruises for their trouble. Not when she swam through Ursula’s strait, explored as deep underground as she dared with Hadie, and half-hungover, tried to steal a barge ship herself in the early hours after Harry’s sixteenth birthday rager. 

Not when the Crowned Prince of Auradon decided that the Isle children deserved redemption, deserved a second change when they never even had their first, and plucked four kids off the Isle and whisked them away to Auradon a month before his coronation. 

Not. Even. Then.

It rages a storm inside her chest like she’s never felt before and Uma is a boiling pot fit to burst; a tsunami clashing against her chest begging to be let out. A hurricane tearing up her heart, a riptide wearing at her soul, and salt water desperately burning in her eyes. 

Mal always gets to _fucking_ win doesn’t she?

And Uma _knows_ she’s going for the wand, because who honestly doesn’t—Maleficent is far from the only master magical practitioner on the Isle, and that aside everyone here knows the power it holds, are _trapped_ by it. A storm rages in her gut and she _knows_ that there are only two ways for this to end. Mal gets the wand and frees the Isle to let loose her mother; the fae will shake the earth and burn the palaces and attempt to subjugate the seas. Uma would have to fight back, but she would be free and Harry would be alive and they would finally have the power to truly go back against Maleficent's wretched rule. 

Or, Uma thinks teeth grinding, Mal fails. Mal fails because good does not mean incompetent; the Auradonian’s are bastards but Uma refuses to underestimate even the dumbest of them even if others will because _she will not make the same mistakes as her mother._ Mal fails and gets dumped right back onto the Isle with Carlos, Evie, and Jay quick to follow. Mal fails, the wand slips through her fingers, and the next generation and the generations after are condemned to the Isle forever because Mal fails. 

Mal always gets to win. But villains always lose. 

The storm builds and the sea swirls and Uma is a wave raring to build, desperate to crash, but slamming up against a barrier that refuses to break. She’s a river wanting for the ocean, will cut through a mountain to get there if she has to, but that takes time and she has none. _Harry_ has none, has five years left if they’re lucky, and they aren’t, and _Mal_ got a one way ticket off the Isle that she’s gonna _waste_ and Uma doesn’t fear fire but part of her is still _burned_ from loosing what she thought was her best friend. 

Uma doesn’t think she’ll ever know what Mal expected out of rotten shrimp and reputation ruining nicknames. Whether she wanted Uma taken down a peg or to end their friendship altogether. But Uma’s seen her new friends, seen Carlos who’s too meek from Cruella’s abuse, Evie who’s too busy playing stupid to please Grimhilde, and Jay who’s so insistent on never being apart of a team that he wouldn’t ever think to lead one. Her new friends weren’t threats; Uma was. 

Uma _is._

She refused to get crushed under Mal’s heel, refuses to bow to power handed not _earned_. Maleficent's power stretches across the Isle thanks to her goblins, but the docks are _owned_ by the pirates, by Uma and Harriet Hook, and the ocean does not bow to the flicker of flames or the rumble of the earth. Mal may never take Uma seriously but her mother does; if Maleficent struck Uma down, Harriet Hook would take the docks and with Harry as the new Captain of the Lost Revenge the two of them would shut it down. Starve the Isle out. 

All the food on the Isle came through the docks. Harriet Hook owed Uma no loyalty, no friendship, no power—but she loves her brother. The ocean plays favorites and so does Harriet; Callista Jane has always ridden on her own wave, determined to not be shackled by a crew, but Harriet was a captain at her core and before Harry was Uma’s first mate he was her’s. Pirates play dirty but they also play in teams, and CJ has yet to figure out that it was impossible for one person to rig a ship to ride. 

Harriet Hook loves her brother; she also knew he was doomed to die. It hadn’t occurred to Uma immediately, but Harriet had _been_ there when Harry’s mom had died. Had dragged him away from her body as their father wept and fastened the leather cord of a lifeline around his neck. Had called the Never Fairy _Mum_ and learned how to hold a sword under her and Hook’s tutelage. Uma’s spent two years trying to get Harry Hook off the Isle before he croaked; Harriet didn’t owe Uma loyalty, but she at least owed her revenge. 

Uma isn’t a fool. She _knows_ Maleficent rules the Isle, and planned for her daughter to one day too. That threat of revenge hanging in the air is probably the only reason why Maleficent hasn’t ordered Mal to skewer Uma on her own sword. It was how the Isle worked, precariously balanced power dynamics that hinged on threats and gang wars. A fire threatening to flare, a wave waiting to crash, a tornado starting to swirl, and a crevice waiting to crack. 

Uma _hates_ the Isle of the Lost. Viciously, to no abandon. She hates what it is, what it represents, what it does. She hates that they only get Auradon’s leftovers, hates that she’s never seen the stars, hates that she was born on this pile of garbage in the first place. 

She can’t find herself to hate the people, though. Not _her_ people. 

She has plenty in her to hate Mal. Not just because of the betrayal, but because of _years_ of being unable to truly fight back against it. She can win turf wars against Mal but she can never start them. She can’t let the fae crush her underfoot but neither can she step out out of the way. 

Not even when that precocious _brat_ left for Auradon. Mal’s territory is newly abandoned now, ripe for the taking and it would be so _easy_ to send her pirates in and set up her protection racket. But taking that territory while Mal is alive and well, even without anyone to defend it, is as good as a declaration of war because Maleficent is half the power behind her daughter and she’s still ruling them from the top of Bargain Castle as she waits impatiently for her daughter to succeed, or to fail. 

So Uma’s stuck. _Still_ stuck. As much as she’s been in the past sixteen years, only now she has to watch Mal _leave._ Even worse—she has to watch Mal leave with her _friends_. Pluck Carlos from de Ville’s crutches, Evie from Grimhilde’s castle, and Jay from Jafar’s hand and go to _freedom_ . Uma’s been chained on her whole life, wearing cinder block shoes, but watching _this_ is like being tossed into a volcano with them still attached to her feet. She can’t breath and she _burns_. 

She’s running out of time, and salt water doesn’t burn, but it _boils_. Uma’s temper rolls off of her like waves as she paces the Chip Shoppe, closed but for her crew and boots smacking so loud into the cement that it sounds like thunder. She doesn’t think she’s ever been this furious before—mad at Auradon and Mal and the _world._

A chance. A true, honest to god chance to get her or Harry or _any_ of her crew off the Isle. 

To get Jonas and his three younger sisters off, her _baby cousins_ off the Isle—Morgen, Morwena, and Moira, twelve year old triplets who spent half their childhood being babysat in the Chip Shoppe while they practiced their violins and _begging_ to join her crew. To get Gil, who’s too kind, Desiree, who’s too clever, and Gonzo, who’s too non confrontational, off the Isle. To get her cousin Hadie with his bright blue mohawk and too-big leather jacket a chance to see a real flower, one that’s not half dead or dying. 

A chance to save her first mate’s life, to see one of her crew get three meals a day, to have someone she cares about _leave_ this hellhole and never return, fairy godmother’s wand be damned. 

A chance that flew past her. Because _apparently_ Ursula isn’t a flashy enough threat for land dwellers to consider her daughter as someone _worthy_ of rehabilitation. 

It always comes down to their parents, in the end, doesn’t it? 

Salt water doesn’t boil easily, but once it does it burns just as deadly as fire. Uma’s blood roars in her ears and part of her wants to rip the stupid nauticus shell necklace off her throat and shatter it onto the ground because Uma is sick of bearing the legacy of a woman who barely even raised her.

Uma is _sick_ of serving a sentence she never did anything to deserve. 

It swirls inside her—grief, resentment, rage—until it mixes into a bitter maelstrom that tears at her insides and leaves her heaving. It’s barely been ten minutes since Mal and her gang left the Isle, but Uma’s managed to work herself into a frenzy, turned her mind into shark invested waters, because she’s lost her chance and now—she almosts laughs, hell, she almost cries—she’s _rooting_ for Mal to win.

Because if she wins Uma will have to fight, sweat blood until she breathes her last because she will not bow down to Maleficent outside the Isle and neither will her crew, but at least she’ll be _free_. At least magic will finally sing in her veins and warm her chest and Harry won’t be stuck on a goddamn _death_ sentence. Because if Mal wins the barrier goes down, but if she looses like villains always do, then Uma will be stuck on this Isle forever, for decades after her best friend dies. 

And Uma can’t do anything. Can’t do anything but resign her fate to be held in Mal’s hands and pursue as many half-witted, half-baked escape attempts as she possibly can because the sea does not rest and neither does she. Not when Harry’s life is on the line. 

Uma’s lost her chance. Some bitter part of her wonders if she ever even had one to begin with. 

She feels like a storm stuck at sea. Fuming and destructive but utterly self-contained. As powerless as a breeze when she reached, instinctively, for magic she had never gotten a chance to know. Uma churns and whirls and rolls and each sharp snap of her heel to the ground was a strike of lightning, a clap of thunder, an agitation that causes her fury to build and build because she is a wave waiting to crest, a tsunami rising high, and she will _drown_ Auradon one day. 

Her breathing’s heavy, and she half hears Gil approach, kind and well-meaning as always but his voice _grates_ , because it’s just another reminder, isn’t it? She’s failed a test she never sat down to take, lost a chance she never even had, _let down her crew without even knowing_ —

“It’ll be okay, Uma,” Gil says, so cheerful and self assured, so faithful and loyal. So _believing._ In _her._ And normally she thrives on faith like the gods she’s descended from, drinks it like a woman dying of thirst, but today it’s nothing more than a reminder that _she could’ve gotten off the Isle._

And she could’ve figured out way to bring them all with her. 

Uma laughs, low, dismissive, and that’s the only warning Gil or her gathered crew gets before Uma slams her fist against one of the pillars and a crack _snaps_ into the wood as white hot pain stabs all the way up her arm. 

“Get. Out.” The words are gritted between her teeth, water leaking through a dam. Uma listens, but carefully doesn’t watch as they file out because she doesn’t want to see the look on their faces. The doors swing shut behind them and for a moment there’s quiet. Uma breathes heavily through her nose to compose herself. She lifts her head and glares through her braids; she heard footsteps and weapons drawn from the sword check but not the chime of glass charms, “I thought I told you to leave. Don’t you listen to your Captain?”

Harry slides off a table with a grin, “I thought I was the one who wanted to ruin my left hand?” He deflects, boots hitting the ground and head tossed back with reckless abandon. He waves his hook for emphasis before setting it down behind him, “If y’wanted to be a Hook so bad, all you had to do was ask.”

“Leave, Harry,” She repeats. Uma doesn’t think she can look at him. Not right now. It would just be so much easier if he’d just leave her alone with her thoughts. But life on the Isle never was easy, was it?

And Harry Hook always made things harder.

His boots pad quietly against the floor but he doesn’t move towards the door like she desperately wishes he would. Harry goes to hop the main table, directly behind her back, and Uma let’s her eyes fall closed for a moment and sighs. Almost a _decade_ of friendship and following her orders and _now_ he chooses to be disobedient? Just her luck. 

Uma’s spent her whole life fighting; the sea beating a barrage of waves against a cliff face to make it crumble. The ocean doesn’t get tired but Uma does, has a deep mournful ache permeating her bones, and a heavy weight over the top of her chest. Part of her wants to roll a ladder down the side of the _Lost Revenge_ and sit, half submerged in the bay, until she falls asleep and never wakes up.

As Harry pulls out half-baked med kit she keeps under the table, Uma thinks of all the times she’s had to pull Harry out off trees or off the crow’s nest; how two years ago, he’d parked himself up there without food or water or sleep for two days just to feel the burn of a breeze underneath his eyelids and across his skin. How he’d almost killed himself just because the Isle was already going to, let her hold his heart in her hands to feel the pulse and promise to him that he’ll live.

Harry has air in his heart but he can still fall. Uma’s never contemplated it before, but just because she’s water doesn’t mean she’ll never drown. 

Some part of her thinks they’re going insane inside the barrier, where the air is heavy with smoke and the water is slick with pollution. Where she can’t see six feet in front of her on a bad day and too much time in the bay gives anyone but her and her cousins hives. 

(Why couldn’t have Beast just let their parents _stay dead?)_

Harry’s jumped back over the table now—hell, she’s gonna have to wipe that down, later—and Uma’s still standing with her fist against cracked wood and her eyes closed. Her arm aches and her knuckles burn but it’s too much an effort to move; still waters after a storm, an eye in the center of the hurricane. 

She hears Harry’s weight shift until he’s leaning against the pillar holding up half her weight. He reaches out, fingertips touching hers, and she purses her lips but let’s him grab her hand in his, still. 

(Part of her wonders what would happen if her mother was awake; if Ursula hadn’t fallen asleep watching soaps, and bothered to enter the main area of the shop she’d been having Uma run for almost five years. Part of her wonders; the rest is too tired to care.) 

They’re both still for a moment; they both breathe. Uma’s own weight feels almost too much, pressing down on her heels and planting heavily into the cool cement floor. She’s like a block of ice, solid and unmoving. Her veins are freezing, but Harry’s hand is warm, and she lifts her head to look up at him.

He smiles at her, half crooked but all genuine, “C’mon darling,” He says, jerking his head towards the table, “Y’can’t wrap that hand by yourself.” 

Harry pulls on her hand, and like a glacier, she melts. 

Uma sighs, lets her fist fall, and ignores the brief flare of pain as it bumps into her side. “Don’t tell me what to do,” She says quietly, but lets him lead her anyways. Uma’s pulled Harry out of trees and off the crow’s nest more times than she can count; now he’s reaching for her and won’t let her drown. 

Harry helps her sit on the table with a smile, one leg hanging off and the other tucked up underneath her chin, “I wouldn’t dream of it,” He swears. 

She’s less angry now, more tired. Uma places her fist on the table and let’s it uncurl, peels off her fingerless glove, ignoring the pinches of pain. Resentment has been her burden for years, but Uma finds anger draining like nothing else, a fire not meant to last amongst the waves. 

Harry whistles idly as he unspools the cloth bandages, sharp yet quiet. He unscrews the half empty bottle of vodka with one hand, and reaches for her bruised hand with the other. She lets him take it. Her first two knuckles are split in violent red from where they carved out a crack in the wood, but all four are swollen, darkening in color. She flexes her fingers once, twice, but no sharp pain races up her arm to white her vision out; nothing’s broken, only bruised. 

The tips of Harry’s fingers dance along her’s, lightly holding them aloft over a rag as he leans against the table. He pours the alcohol over her cuts and it stings; she wonders if, in Auradon, disinfectant is more common than alcohol, always the opposite of the Isle. Mal used to say it made them boring; Uma thinks it makes them safe. 

“You could’ve been in that limo, Harry,” Uma says at last, voice low. Grieving. Harry doesn’t pause, picking up the faded rag he’d placed below her hand to catch the liquid and using it to dry her hand off, their fingertips still intermingled. 

“Well,” He says easily, “I’m not dead yet, am I? Still plenty of time.” 

Sometimes it drives her crazy how—not carefree, because death was a heavy burden especially when you expected it— _unaffected_ Harry was about his own rapidly approaching demise, sometimes. Except for the scant few times it would overwhelm him all at once and he’d balance in dangerously high places as if that would give him wings to feel wind beneath, or stupid, reckless deeds that would get him killed if she wasn’t there to pull him back by his hook, Harry seemed… at peace with his death.

Oh, of course he was filled with resentment and rage. Wind only fuels fire and Harry’s had a pyre in his heart for near ten years, now. Fury for his mother’s death and a desperate determination not to go the same way. Part of her thought, _knew_ , that he hadn’t been resigned to it in two years but the rest of her’s always seen the way he tries to make the best of things, always. The best of the Isle, the best of his family, the best of her. 

The best of the time they had left. 

“How can you be so calm about this?” She demands lowly, spreading her fingers so Harry can weave the bandage between them, “I know you can’t read clocks, Harry, but that doesn’t mean you can’t _tell time!”_ Harry scrunches up his nose, but she continues, “That clock in the croc doesn’t just tick down your Father’s demise. Each second that passes is one more closer to you being dead.” She reaches her good hand up and cuffs Harry underneath the chin. It only makes his mouth quirk in a half smile. She scowls, _“Four years_ , Harry Hook. Why does it feel like you don’t carry the weight of that the way I do?” 

“Easy,” Harry says, and grins, brilliantly bright, as he ties off the ends of the bandage and tucks the edges away, “You said you’d get us out of here, Uma. I believe you.” 

Uma has to look away then. 

Harry presses his lips to her knuckles. She can feel the warmth through the bandages, the way it rushes through her veins and rises in her stomach and flushes her cheeks. Her braids hide her face and her expression—eyes slightly wide and mouth parted—but even if they didn’t it wouldn’t matter because both their heads are ducked; him over her hand and hers because she still can’t look at him, if but for an entirely different reason now.

It’s hard to believe her chest was so cold a moment ago. 

The Isle and Auradon only care about the legacies of the big and bad, but Harry set down his hook, took one of her hands and wrapped the other; all the while letting his mother’s glass charms chime freely over his chest. 

She lifts her head and he his and their eyes make contact, brown against blue; it’s been two years since Harry offered her his heart. She still isn’t sure she knows how to offer hers back.

The Isle works in deals and threats and barters: nothing is freely given. Nothing is supposed to be, anyway. Even her crew’s loyalty, years cemented and returned both ways; strong enough to stand against the roughest tides or the harshest storms, was not given without expectation of something in return. Safety, for most. Family, for Gil and her cousins.

But Harry Hook, who snarls and stabs and whirls in a manic rage that makes him half mad. But Harry Hook, who hands her his life, his heart, a delicate glass charm she could crack in her hand or crush underfoot. Harry Hook offers and gives and devotes himself to her and expects nothing back.

She thinks she could love him if they were not stuck on the Isle. 

(She thinks she already does.)

“You’re a sappy idiot, sometimes Harry,” She deflects, but moves her hand in his until her half bandaged fingers are wrapped around his wrist, tugs gently, and invites, “Come sit with me.”

It’s not an order, but Harry obeys her request like it is. He uses his free hand to leverage himself onto the table to sit with legs crossed, shifting his occupied hand so he was holding her wrist too. He grins and says, “Ah, yes, but you love me anyway.”

Uma takes her hat off. Places it at her back and, for a moment, her position as Captain with it. The Isle was obsessed with roles, and in a way, Uma was too. She was Captain, he was first mate; he was air, she was water; she was daughter of Ursula, he was son of Hook. But right now, when she puts her hat down and tucks her braids behind her ears, she surrenders those roles. 

She’s Uma, he’s Harry; every moment of their lives they’ve carried the roles of their parents, Atlas’s with unshakeable weights. But in the quiet of Ursula’s Fish and Chips, with the sounds of the docks slipping through the doors, Uma feels like she can breathe, if only for a moment. 

She’s a legacy; so is Harry. What she wouldn’t give, somedays, for them to just be themselves. 

“Yeah,” Uma admits quietly, I do.”

His cheeks go bright pink. He’s not easily flustered and neither is she, but Uma’s hand is wrapped in bandages and Mal has left the Isle so it seems today is one for rarities. 

Uma laughs brightly, chest lighter at the look on his face, and drags Harry in until he’s half pressed to her shoulder and her arms are wrapped around the back of his neck. Harry tucks himself so his face is against her neck and she can still feel the flustered heat coming off his cheeks even as he wraps his own arms around her waist. 

Her chest is so _warm_ ; no longer water fit to boil, but waves lapping lazily in the sun. Uma’s love is constant, everpresent, and now, acknowledged. Admitted, if only through a joke delivered half-seriously, careless words confirmed. and exhilaratingly terrifying because of it. 

Hugging on the table top is awkward and uncomfortable, but Harry tosses one leg over Uma’s, she presses their fronts together until their necklaces are half tangled together, and neither of them let go.

Love is quiet on the Isle of the Lost. Rarely in the words and all in the action. Love is how Gil was the first person to get a hammock on the _Lost Revenge_ , after years of Uma sneaking him through her window so he could somewhere to sleep when Gaston’s temper turned hair trigger. Love is how Harriet and Harry always have a place for CJ in their cabins or their crews, even if the girl, flightier than Gil and freer than Harry, can never quite manage to stay for long. Love is wrapped up in the bonds Uma has with her crew, and Harry was the first; its fitting he’s the only person she finds she can admit some of it to. 

Love is quiet on the Isle. Hard to identify and hidden. But despite what Auradon thinks, villains are just as capable of it as heroes.

“So,” Harry says, voice muffled against the crook of her neck, “D’ya feel better, Captain.” 

Uma laughs, untangles her arms from over his shoulders and pushes him back so hard he sways, “Alright, alright,” She orders, putting her hat back on, “I think we’re done being mushy for the day,” _We’re still villains_ , she means, _still on the Isle,_ “Get off the table before I make you scrub it.” 

“Aye aye,” Harry parrots, riding with the change in her tone as he slides off the table and moves to retrieve his hook, “Back to the ship?”

Uma pushes herself off, swipes her fingerless glove off the table, and tucks it into her jacket pocket. 

“Yeah,” She says, “Pass me my sword.” 

The Isle has rules, and you have to play within them to win. Uma’s learned her strength from them, taken their lessons to heart and kept their bruises always in mind. She remembers her mistakes so she doesn’t make them again; don’t trust her mother, don’t trust Mal, never underestimate anyone’s capacity for cruelty. 

Some people see the rules and think that love is a weakness. But Uma’s a sea witch and was raised to read the fine print; love isn’t the weakness, showing it is.

And that’s enough for some. Enough for her Uncle, or Dr. Facilier, who’s kids are fed and bruiseless and don’t need to come up with excuses not to go home. 

But nothing on the Isle has ever been enough for Uma. 

The Isle has rules. A code she goes against whenever she privately, quietly holds Harry’s hand. A statute she just smashed to pieces in less than a handful of words and a desperate embrace. A law she’s willfully, fearfully ignored as much as she’s dared for the past two years.

(Harry doesn’t have much time left if she fails. Uma does not want to waste it.)

He tosses her the sword and she tucks it into her belt, flexes her aching hand afterwards. Harry opens the door of the Shoppe for her, follows her out and lets her lead. 

The Isle has rules.

But it’s fine, she’s a villain; she was born to break them anyways.

Uma’s bruises fade; her cuts clot into scabs and heal into two dark scars across her left hand, both hidden by her fingerless gloves. Gang wars stop and start, territories change hands as violently as ever, but even as the weeks go by Mal’s is still left untouched.

Things on the Isle stay the same. Surrounded by water it may be, but the Isle is a prison of earth; meant to be eternal, everlasting. Unchanging. And yet, like the slow sifting of sands in the breeze or the patient weathering of a tide, things began to change. 

Mal’s only been gone a week when Hadie shows up during her afternoon shift with Claudine Frollo trailing anxiously behind him. Uma slaps down a tray in front of Bonnie, and gestures for them to sit.

“Cousin,” He greets, as he takes his seat. His voice is deeper than when she heard it last, and from the way his eyebrow twitches as she grins he knows it. She wonders if his voice will crack like Gil’s did. Gods above, she _hopes._

“Cousin,” She replies easily, shoulders loose as she swirls a chair around and piles her arms on the back. It’s good to see him. It always is. He visits after school when he can, always at the Shoppe and never at the ship. Uma doesn’t take offense; her visits to her Uncle’s cave with Jonas as a child may have been frequent, but they were never long. Without the river that flowed through the main cavern she doubts the two of them would have visited much at all. 

It’s a reminder that she hasn’t seen her Uncle in months. He rarely leaves his cave, and the older she’s gotten—busy with crew and turf and the Shoppe—the more her relationship with Mal deteriorates, the less she wants to risk entering the fae’s turf to visit him.

But Mal is gone now. Uma could visit her Uncle without risking a gang war. She can bring Jonas and the triplets, sit by the dark river with them, and listen to her Uncle’s stories for the first time in ages, classic myths uniquely reshaped by his snarky commentary. It’s a thought for later, though, maybe something even to look forward to. 

For now, business. Uma is a sea witch who’s never truly touched the sea, but one look at her cousin and his companion tells her all she needs to know: a deal is stirring up in still waters.

“Claudine Frollo,” She greets, head tilted curiously to the side, smile curving mischievously upwards, “It’s been a while,” Claudine nods, reserved, but not timid, “What could you ever want from me?”

“Shelter,” She says after a moment; voice clear and deep like bells. She rings them in the highest tower of Dragon Hall and Uma’s heard them each morning for years, even if she’s never witnessed the act in person. It’s given Claudine strength in her shoulders and forearms, the kind that go unnoticed under her modest clothes and her demure posture. 

But on the Isle strength is strength, no matter how hidden. 

“Shelter?” Uma questions. It’s not an unreasonable thing to ask for, not when it’s the thing that brought half her crew to her side, but knowledge is power in all situations, and Uma is drawn to both like the sea is to sand. 

“Yes,” Claudine says. She looks at Hadie, at the pirates surrounding them, at Harry and Gil, who aren’t even pretending not to listen from where they’re picking at their lunch at their table, “I know you don’t generally make deals with people who don’t live on your turf,” She adds, almost an afterthought, but they both know it isn’t.

It’s not that Uma doesn’t deal with people who don’t live on her turf. Desiree isn’t from the docks or the wharf, but she’s been with Uma for half a decade, plucked up from Ginny Gothel’s old territory before she lost half of it to Mal and Maddy Mim when they were twelve. Sea witches deal with everyone, as does the ocean, but when her mother dealt with Ariel it was her downfall, and Uma is not her mother. Will not make her mistakes. 

When Uma says nothing Claudine continues hesitantly, after another shared glance with Hadie, “Mal’s been gone for a week,” Claudine says quietly, “And Maleficent cares more about keeping my father in line than she does me.”

“Your father,” Uma repeats again, eyebrow raised, and Claudine gives a small nod, tugs tightly on the long sleeves of her dress. Hadie stares at her with dark, heavy eyes, almost pleading. 

Her little cousin is kind. A rarity on the Isle and a weakness, one he can’t afford to carry openly. But he helped lead her through the caverns when she requested, expected no explanation and got nothing a private half hug and a hair ruffle in return. 

Uma could have turned Claudine away at the door. Her father can’t brute force his way into power like Maleficent did, more like Jafar or her mother. Clever, manipulative, deadly. Only Ursula never tried to commit genocide. Frollo is dangerous, maniacal, malicious. An ounce of power in his hand is a death sentence, and each kid on the Isle was raised to avoid him and his shop like the plague. That alone is reason enough to dismiss the girl, but Frollo is neighbors with Gaston and Claudine was watching from a window when Uma helped Gil move out. Has seen the nasty knife scar she carved across the man’s bicep. 

She knows that Uma does not cow from villains far past their prime. 

Frollo is deadly but one preacher is not a church, one judge is not justice, and one flicker is not a flame bright enough to burn the Isle down. 

Uma’s eyes catch on Claudine’s sleeves again. Back up to her face. 

Flames have to burn at something to survive. 

The girl lives in Mal’s territory, and the fae was always looking for an excuse to rumble, to win. To talk to Claudine is a risk. To deal with her is a declaration, a death sentence. 

(Mal’s not here now, though, is she?)

(Of course she isn’t. Claudine would never have come if she was.)

Claudine has concealer caked over her right cheekbone. Uma hadn’t noticed at first, but it shines unnaturally under the light and has an odd, slightly discolored texture to it.

Hadie is family. He looks at her imploringly on behalf of his friend.

He’s a good kid; Uma has known him almost since the day he was born, when her Uncle had sent his demons to invite her and Jonas over (distinctly neither of their mothers) the day after he’d discovered Hadie on the threshold of his cave. Villains are dangerous, and her uncle was a god, but his eyes had been red when he let her sit on his couch with his son and spoke of how he wished his wife could meet him.

(She would, of course. Everything came to the Underworld eventually and Persephone had not left it in twenty years. But Uma and Jonas both knew that wasn’t what their great-uncle meant.) 

Hades was a hard god, temperamental and filled with resentment. The scorned older sibling who ruled over the dead, forced to revive countless villains before being tossed into a pit with people he’d personally designed punishments for. He hated Zeus, hated King Beast, but said in a tone of voice Uma could never properly decipher, that he’d done his scheme for the century and just wanted to get home. 

_The Underworld sucks ass, kid,_ He’d told her flippantly, years ago, ignoring the way Hadie, perched on his shoulders, tugged with interest at his bright hair, _But it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than this dump. And here I thought nothing was more boring than Dad’s stomach._

Family means a lot on Olympus. On the Isle. Power and legacies wrapped up in every thing they did, an echo of the past no matter how hard they tried to leave it behind.

Family means a lot to Uma, too.

_Hadie_ is family. A quiet short statured fourteen year old who loves asphodel flowers and his father’s dog. Who stares at her across the table, sitting next to a friend with badly hidden bruises. 

Uma does not have to make a deal; there is no magic on the Isle of the Lost, and without it she is only a sea witch in her blood. 

Things could stay the same. Uma could say no. But Claudine Frollo is sitting across from her asking for shelter from her father.

Things are already changing. 

Uma stands, pushes her chair back so hard the wood scraps. Claudine looks up at her, and Uma smiles, twists two braids together with her left hand and offers out her right.

“You poor unfortunate soul,” Uma drawls at last, wiggling her fingers, “Each night on my ship is worth a shift in this Shoppe.”

Claudine doesn’t hesitate, shoots her arm so fast across the table that her sleeve shakes back, leaving bruises on full display as she clasps Uma’s hand in her own and says, half desperate, _“Deal.”_

Claudine’s voice tolls like a bell across the Shoppe. A contract signed into being. 

Uma lets go first, unties the knot at the base of her spine and throws the apron at Claudine’s chest so fast the girl half-startles to catch it. 

“Your shift starts now,” Uma informs her, grinning wryly, “Don’t worry too much about getting the orders right. The shit all tastes the same.”

Claudine stares at her apron, up at her cousin, at Uma, and smiles softly.

Mal has left the Isle of the Lost and Uma has not. Resentment breeds hot in her gut but if only for this… Uma thinks getting left behind isn’t all bad. Not when Claudine looks at her like she’s the salvation Frollo still tries to preach. Hadie nods at her gratefully. Uma turns around.

“Thank you,” Claudine says, only once Uma is six and a half steps away, heel half frozen against the ground. Uma likes to wield her smile as a weapon, brightly sharp and cutting. But as she shoves Harry over on the table so she can steal some of his lunch, the small one curves across her face is soft and real. 

Uma is still going to get off the Isle, mark her words. 

But without Mal here, Uma can admit to herself it’s a little easier to breathe, her chest a little less tight. It’s a weight off her back. Uma protects her crew. She _only_ protects her crew, and while it may overlap with her family, may be _most_ of it, Hadie refuses to step foot on a ship and Uma refuses to cave to the triplet’s until they turn thirteen. 

Claudine isn’t crew _or_ family. She isn’t even from Uma’s turf. But she shook Uma’s hand and tied on an apron, looked at Uma like she was something other than Ursula’s daughter. Like she was just _Uma_ , Captain of the _Lost Revenge._

It’s a good feeling. Light and bubbly bright like sea form off a crested wave. It almost makes her giddy. 

It doesn’t last for long.

Anthony Tremaine stops by two weeks later to drop off his sister Anna at the Shoppe during the lunch rush. She’s twelve, with their mother’s dark ringlet curls streaked through with red dye, and Anthony blithely tells her that he needs someplace to keep her for the next few days. 

Uma raises an eyebrow, challenging, and says with a smile that she’s not a babysitter. Anthony scowls so hard his forehead creases, and swipes a finger roughly down the side of his sister’s neck. Anna flinches, and Anthony shows off the concealer, the way it mingles with blood to catch in his nail.

“I heard you’re letting Frollo squat for work,” He tells her, rubbing his fingers together in disinterest, “The brat can make your kitchen shine.”

“How long?” Uma says, sliding two trays off her arms and onto the table with a clatter, eyes firmly on the swollen red welt on the side of Anna’s forehead. She’s in pain, but hiding it well. 

“Three days,” Anthony shrugs, brushing back dark bangs with his palm, “Granny Tremaine hasn’t lost her temper with age, I’ll tell you that.” 

Uma leans down and takes Anna’s chin in her hand, turns her head sideways and brushes the hair away. The injury goes into her hairline and blood has dripped down her ear. It’ll get infected if it isn’t cleaned soon. 

She doesn’t ask why he didn’t go to Harriet with this, even though they’re both older Isle kids, friends, and two of the first students to step foot into Dragon Hall. Even though if Anthony wasn’t the oldest of over half a dozen siblings and cousins he would’ve joined Harriet’s crew ages ago, despite his obsession with status. _Uma_ was the one who made these kinds of deals on the docks. And dealing with Claudine formed a precedent; the Tremaine’s lived on Mal’s turf too.

“If you can give Gil a haircut,” She says casually to both siblings, thumb carefully hovering over the line of the wound, “Then I’ll throw in meals too.” 

“I’ve got split ends!” Gil chimes in helpfully from the kitchen, where Cook roped him into washing dishes earlier. Uma rolls her eyes fondly. 

Anthony smiles, condescending as always and Uma stands back up, hand perched on her hip, “Deal, Tremaine?”

“Deal,” He says easily, like he doesn’t care. Like he’s as indifferent as the earth in his core. Uma normally doesn’t spare pride, but just this once she ignores the way his free hand has an iron grasp on his sister’s shoulder. Uma matches his grin, lazy, predatorial, “I’ll pick the pipsqueak up after the lunch rush on Thursday.”

“How generous,” Uma drawls, and jerks her head to the side to signal Desiree from where she’s sat at the bar, “Dez, why don’t you take Anna to the kitchen. Get her acquainted with Cook.” 

_Clean out the welt_ , Uma means, _Make sure it’s stopped bleeding. I know you remember how._

Desiree approaches, light on her feet, and Anna’s eyes brighten at the sight of her, “Hi Dezi,” She says quietly. Desiree looks at the girl heavily for a moment, before setting one knee down and taking Anna’s smaller hands in her’s.

“You’ve gotten bigger, you little hellraiser,” She says softly, “Why don’t we clean you up in the back.”

Anna looks over her shoulder at her brother, and Desiree clenches her jaw at the sight of the blood. Anthony nods, staring at Desiree. Her ratty, half-faded peasant dress and his perfectly cut jacket don’t hide the family resemblance as much as either one of them would like. They’ve both inherited Lady Tremaine’s dark eyes and round cheeks, her stern complexion and rigidly perfect posture. 

“Take care of my sister, cousin,” Anthony takes his hand off Anna’s shoulder and shoves it into his pocket. He’s earth; steady, stable, stubborn—Desiree’s total opposite. He craves freedom, but knows he’ll never have it. It’s another tragedy of the Isle; if Anthony didn’t have his family to look after, she thinks he’d make a decent pirate. 

On Harriet’s crew, of course. Uma doesn’t think she could stand having him around that long and it had nothing to do with his element. 

“Yeah, yeah, Tony,” Desiree waves him off, and Gonzo snorts at the dismissal from where he’s retrieving the left behind trays, “You just make sure you keep taking care of mine.” 

“Whatever,” Anthony says, turning away from Anna, “It’s not like you’re around to.” 

The line in Desiree’s jaw goes hard and she shoots to her feet. Her hand is half-reaching for her sword, but Uma laughs and holds out her hand in front of her, “If you kill him,” Uma warns, as Anthony takes a languid step back towards the door, “You’re gonna be the one scrubbing blood off of my floors.”

“C’mon Anna,” Desiree says, words hissed through her teeth, the sharp bite of a winter wind, “It’s the lunch rush. Your timing is perfect.” 

Desiree presses her hand to Anna’s back and the girl is pushed forward towards the kitchen. Heedless of her cousin’s manhandling, Anna manages to wave at her older brother over her shoulder before the doors swing close behind them, “Bye Anthony!”

“Well,” Anthony says, smiling regally as he leaves, “Pleasure doing business with you, Captain.” He bumps shoulders with Harry, looming over by the sword check, “Tell Harriet I say hi, little Hook.” 

The double doors swing shut behind him, and Claudine sets a tray in front of Jonas. Uma pinches the bridge of her nose. 

This is going to become a _thing_ now, isn’t it?

A smile creeps onto her face.

Gods above, she hopes so. 

The Isle shatters hope like broken glass and scatters it on the floor for its inhabitants to step on. Sixteen years in—Uma should know better by now than to have it. 

For the first time in her goddamn _life_ Uma hopes Mal will win, _wants_ her to because she always does, even if villains never do. 

There’s nearly five hundred kids on the Isle. Uma doesn’t even know half their _names_ because most of them are just passing fish in the sea, children of petty or career criminals that were tossed onto the Isle at it’s creation. 

Kids who don’t deserve to be here anymore than their parents do. Kids who wouldn’t be worth tracking down if the barrier breaks. 

_When_ the barrier breaks.

Mal is more obsessed with gaining her mother’s approval than almost every other damn kid on the hell forsaken island. _That’s_ what Uma has to thank for Shrimpy. That’s what she’s relying on to free them all. 

She should know better to rely on anyone than herself or her crew. 

Mal chooses _good._

Uma would laugh but it gets caught in her throat. As if the fae can just put _years_ of torment behind her with teary smile and declaration of love. Uma could see this from Carlos or Evie. Hell, even _Jay._ But Mal? Oh yeah, _real_ convenient that she “falls” for the new King. 

Auradon, the Isle—the older Uma gets the more she realizes they’re the same. Pushing the mantra of heroes and villains, black and white, good or evil. Fucking news flash: most people go to the Asphodel Fields. Most people are just _people._

Aladdin was a thief; a hero. Harry’s mom was a thief; a villain. 

Uma is sixteen and she’s known for years that stories are all in the framing. 

Maleficent's daughter, betraying her mother, beating her in an over glorified staring contest, all in the name of _love._ Now that’s a story for the ages.

Nevermind that she screwed over thousand of people. _Her_ people. Some princess of the Isle, she is. A fire lighting a field aflame; so focused on keeping itself alive it doesn’t realize how many lives it screws over in the process. 

Mal already betrayed Uma once, Uma doesn’t know how she managed to let the girl do it a second time. 

Uma thought there were only two ways this would go. She made a mistake; it won’t happen again. 

(She isn’t her mother. But she’s stuck on this Isle because she bares her legacy.)

The worst part, though? The barrier _breaks._ Fairy Godmother’s little girl breaks it in a fit during the coronation, waving the wand like it was some _toy_ instead of a goddamn weapon. 

A single blast from it is so powerful the ground shakes beneath their feet. Morgen and Claudine fall to the floor with the force of it. Uma almost chokes on the sensation, gripping onto the table with white knuckles as magic crests in her chest like a wave and swirls into her mother’s necklace. 

Jonas chokes on thin air, and almost knocks Gonzo to the floor with his sister as he lunges for a glass of water and pours it so fast down his throat that half of it spills down the sides of his mouth. Lightning crackles around the tray in Bonnie’s hand and blackens the metal. Next to her, the charms around Harry’s neck started to glow _gold_ through the chipped paint, and Harry had to tuck them in the crease of his palm to stop them floating off his chest. 

They had tasted freedom for a moment. Tantalizing, beautiful, all they ever wanted and never had. 

It made it all that much more worse when it was ripped away.

Half the crew had been delirious from the shock of the magic, and a handful of them hadn’t even been _there_ when the Shoppe shock. Gil went running for Deisree and Uma was so nauseous her vision was swaying as much as her stomach. 

By the time they all made it to the ship, fought off half Ginny Gothel’s gang when they decided that Uma’s ship would be easier to steal than either Hook or Harriet’s (it wasn’t) despite the fact that none of them knew how to even sail, and pushed off the dock—

Well. Let’s just say that Uma didn’t need Gil and his spyglass to know the barrier had been reinstated. 

Her magic was a rising tsunami with the broken barrier, shining through the nautilus shell, and the barrier couldn’t stop it but _moved_ with it. The wave crashed down on _her_ , and Uma fell against the wheel gasping and grasping at her chest, tearing at the top of her dress with her hands because she _couldn’t breath._

Uma is _water_ . A _caecilia._ It _never_ should have hurt her.

Not like this. 

It’s like a riptide pulling her in, a current dragging her down, her magic and her very being pinned and repressed under the pressure of the waves. Uma’s _lived_ like this for years, born into a prison with her hands already cuffed behind her back, so everpresent she never even noticed the chaffing. 

But for the first time in her life, Uma’s head has burst through the water and she’s _breathed._

(Uma’s known for two years that the barrier has been suffocating Harry, killing him. She never realized it was drowning her too.)

And now her head’s been forced back underneath. Her magic ripped from her before she could even use it, feel it in more than the warmth around her neck or the tingle in the tips of her fingers. 

She feels sick. Cotton-headed with heavy limbs and an unbearable _ache_ of emptiness in her chest. Through the darkness swimming through her vision she manages to get a glimpse of a few of the others—Bonnie, vomiting over the edge of the ship; Morwena, desperately gripping onto Jonas’s hand to stay standing; Harry, face gray and hands shaking as he props himself up on the main mast, looking like a corpse. 

“Uma,” Gil says softly, concerned, ducking himself under her arm to replace the wheel with his shoulder. She leans into him and tries not to groan, “I guess the barrier came back faster than we thought.” 

“Yeah,” She gasps out, and gestures vaguely for him to help move her to the steps so she can sit down. He helps her down and she places her head in her hands, rubs her eyes with her thumbs until fireworks burst beneath them. Gil doesn’t remove his arm from her shoulder, and she leans into his warmth.

This—weakness—isn’t allowed on the Isle of the Lost. But for a single, shining moment she thought she was free of it. She thought they _all_ were. 

“Dezi and I got the anchor down before we hit it,” Gil tells her quietly, “So did _Seven Deaths_. But the _Jolly Roger_ hit it straight on. The front of it’s real smashed up.” Uma nods slowly, mouth dry, “What are we gonna do, Uma?” 

Uma swallows thickly and opens her eyes. Her head pounds and the low light of the Isle manages to somehow _burn_. 

“We turn around,” She tells him heavily, “And we take Mal’s territory.”

“Really?” Gil’s eyes light up in excitement. Like they hadn’t held freedom in their hands. Like Auradon hadn’t snatched right back what they stole. 

“Yeah,” Uma nods again, steadier, “She’s not coming back for it.”

_For us_ , Uma means, and Gil understands.

“You would,” He says, insistent. 

Gil’s enter lack of brain to mouth filter has gotten him in trouble dozens of times. He’s said the wrong thing at least twice to almost everyone on the Isle, and the only reason he hasn’t been creamed for it is because he’s her third in command. Everyone says she keeps him around for the muscle. Really, she keeps him around for this: he’s one of her best friends; he knows what to say when it counts.

And he’s never lying.

“I would,” She nods, and then leans out of Gil’s half embrace, stomach lurching at the sudden movement, “Grab everyone who’s still standing and see if you can take us in.”

“Me?” Gil says, a pleasantly surprised smile creeping onto his face.

“Yes, you,” Uma smiles back, “Who else would I let steer the _Lost Revenge?_ Hop to it, Legume.” Gil grins and bounces to his feet before going off to grab Desiree, Cook, and Claudine, who was responsible for keeping a dangerously swaying Jonas still on his feet. 

Uma shook her head in a futile attempt to clear it. She’d almost forgotten they’d brought Claudine on board. The girl wasn’t a member of her crew, but she was under Uma’s protection just the same. Uma hadn’t been about to leave her behind when they high-tailed it out of the Shoppe for her Father to find. 

And now they were heading back. Uma clenches her fist slowly, digs her nails deep into the leather of her glove. She takes a slow, careful breath, and met Harry’s eyes across the ship. His skin was still ashen, hair sweat strewn, but his eyes were bright again. He looked just as sickly as she felt, coming down from a fever or the flu. 

His shoulders are slumped, arms hanging tiredly by his sides. The glass charms are hanging openly around his neck again; pixie dust dull. 

(Having her magic Uma felt like she was _living_ for the first time. She wonders if it was the first time Harry felt _alive_.) 

He smiles at her, exhausted, and she returns it. All she wants to do is go below deck and collapse, mourn, _sleep_. 

She can’t. 

Uma closes her eyes and leans back on her palms. She takes a deep breath; in and out. This—the King’s degree, Mal’s betrayal of the Isle, the barrier breaking, reforming—this was unexpected. Not a single one of them something Uma could plan for. 

But she had been planning escape for years. And what she’s always needed for it was _power_. 

Mal and her mother sure as hell left a lot of that behind. 

Fire burns the field to ash; Mal has taken all she can get from the Isle, and now she’s leaving it behind for better pastures. Uma is the ocean, but right now she is the rain; she will cultivate the Isle for herself, her crew, until they can _all_ finally leave. 

Uma thought she was gonna have to carve up the rest of Ginny Gothel’s territory for this to work, or go against Maddy Mim and Jade for a part of theirs. But taking Mal’s, even if it’s just her leftovers, what she’s left behind—it’s satisfying in a way Uma can barely describe. 

By the time Gil has brought them back into the docks, the whole crew is back on their feet, swords in hand. Uma’s head is still pounding behind her eyes and Harry’s skin color still doesn’t look quite right, but none of that matters now: Uma can hear the chaos, the screams, the violence.

She glances over at Claudine and tells her to keep an eye on the triplet’s. 

The Isle’s even more of a free for all than usual, and she’s gonna take advantage of it; take new turf in the eye of the hurricane and come out as unscathed as she can. 

There’s safety in numbers, but none of them were raised to be team players. Uma’s got a gang of fourteen and it’s the largest one on the Isle. 

It’s all too easy for them to walk through the docks, cutting through the crowds with steel on their hips and their hands on the handles. Uma leads them to where Mal’s territory borders hers and she can see Bargain Castle, hear the shouts of the looters.

“Go,” Uma tells them, slides her sword from her belt and raises it in the air in front of them, “Let them know this area’s under new management.”

Her crew cheers and rushes forward, Bonnie hollering loudly and Desiree whooping beside her. Gil dashes past her with a grin and makes for the Tremaine’s salon and Jonas high fives him as he makes for the one run by the Queen of Hearts. Harry bumps their shoulders with a mad grin, flipping his hook between his hands.

“‘M going for Jafar’s shop,” He tells her gleefully, always out for Jay, in a weird rivalry Uma’s never quite gotten, “You want anything, Captain?”

“Yeah,” Uma tells him, grinning, “See if you can get Lagan and Derelict back for me. With Jay gone I think I’ve got full custody of ‘em.” 

Jay’s the only member of Mal’s gang that Uma’s ever really talked to. She vaguely remembers having half a conversation with Evie when they were six, and Carlos is intensely skittish. Jay, on the other hand, seemed to relish in his own charm, and despite his close friendship with Mal, was never afraid to drop by the Shoppe for advice on caring for the sons of her Mother’s eels or to pick fights with Harry.

(She thinks Harry and Jay used to be friends, back when Harry still attended Dragon Hall. If not for her and Mal’s vendetta, she wonders if they still would be.)

“Aye, aye!” Harry salutes her with his hook, walking backwards for a moment before swinging around and lunging into the crowd.

Uma’s grin goes vicious. 

While Auradon dances and parties and celebrates the defeat of Maleficent and the crowning of the new King, Uma and her crew slash, stab, and skewer their way throughout the center of the Isle. 

Bonnie throws a molotov cocktail right through the balcony of Bargain Castle with a manic grin, cackling at the panicked flaps of a singed raven as it escapes the smoke and Desiree swings her crossbow off her shoulder, nails three of Mal’s self portraits in the eye with arrows dipped in red paint. Gil steals half the cash register from _Curl Up and Dye_ with a half shrug in Dizzy Tremaine’s direction and Harry shatters the windows in front of Jafar’s shop, jumps through, and gets enough powdered glass stuck in his hair that he manages to nick his forehead. 

It’s chaos. It’s a storm. Jonas carves their symbol into a dozen wooden signs with his knife and Cook finds one of Mal’s old cans of spray paint and adds one right on the Castle’s door. 

They rampage and they steal. Uma holds seven people at sword point, and parries three attackers with ease and stabs one through the thigh.

Stuck here, without her magic, Uma will never reach her full power, her potential. But without Mal or her Mother, Uma doesn’t need it. 

The ocean is always hungry, and Uma unleashes her crew as a whirlpool, a riptide, to take and take and _take_ and bring it all back to her. Uma listens to wood smash against stone and glass shatter against steel with a bright, dangerous smile; the tide is rolling in.

There’s a power vacuum on the Isle of the Lost.

And Uma intends to fill it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Would you believe me if I said that this chapter was supposed to be 5k max? 
> 
> This chapter has been done for a month, but I've wanted to get a chapter buffer between each update and chapter three (our lovely Descendants One and Descendants Two interlude) had to be rewritten conveniently around the time I lost my power for a week. Fun times. 
> 
> Anyways, this chapter probably explores Uma's just...general anger the most? Despite the whole "plenty mad" line Uma's not actually an angry person or character; she's resentful, and I think that's why she's so moving. 
> 
> She's very emotionally compromised the first part of this chapter (and with Harry, in general, I mean) so that's my excuse for why they are Grossly Soft together this chapter beyond the fact that I love them XD. 
> 
> And! More Isle kids! I don't care what d3 tells me Hades is definitely a good parent to his one actual kid aka Hadie. My canon for this verse is that Hades tried to take over the world because he was bored and needed a project to work on while Persephone was gone because "missing her" isn't productive, apparently. 
> 
> As for Claudine, I'll be honest I choose her because I was looking at the anti-heroes club for kids to be friends with Hadie before the actual formation and realized that, hey, Claude Frollo is Actually the Worst, so it meaƒns a lot that Claudine can trust Uma to keep her dad away. 
> 
> And then the Tremaines! I love Dizzy to bits, but Anthony has always really interested me because...the son of Anastasia the REDEEMED stepsister, refuses to think he can be good/doesn't want to/accepts his lot in life. Idk if Cinderella 3 isn't canon in Descendants because it is here and Anthony is Resentful. I'm not a big oc person but like...I needed more Tremaine siblings than canon gave me so little Anna Tremaine is here. 
> 
> (As for Desiree being a Tremaine, I want to go on record and say that I was coming up with parents for all the named crew and realized that Desiree had the same pink dye in her hair in D2 that Dizzy did and that just sort of spiraled and now Tremaine Family Drama is officially a side-plot to this fic, lol.)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment to make my day or give me a shout on tumblr!
> 
> Edit: Here's a drawing I did of Anna's design because I am unexpectedly attached to her, lol.


	3. take a shot in the face of fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Embargo, Interlude 1/2

There is no magic on the Isle of the Lost and Uma is running out of time before it kills Harry.

At first she thinks it’s shock. Uma had collapsed into bed after securing Mal’s old turf, eyes burning with exhaustion, limbs heavy and dragged down. The way all their magic had been jerked around—thrown into the light of day for the first time, into shallow warm waters, before being forced back into the dark and the cold—had been cruel, exhausting. Painful, in the headache that pounded in her temples and the ache in her chest turning sharp.

Half her crew, half the damn  _ Isle _ had been affected. Those who didn’t have magic rioted. Smashed glass and burned buildings, destroyed what little they had in protest of loosing their freedom  _ again _ and attacked the Auradonian guards who came to quell them. 

The Isle is a self-contained storm. A tornado, a hurricane, a tsunami; twisting in on itself and snapping against its cage, desperate to hurt somebody,  _ anybody.  _ The barrier keeps the magic out and keeps them  _ in _ ; a storm that can’t hurt anybody but itself. After twenty years the wind only roars because it has to, the lightning only strikes out of habit, and the waves grow because they’ve never learned how to shrink. 

But then the barrier goes down. And the storm snaps out—desperate, dangerous, deadly—and falls flat. Smacks up against a barrier shimmering gold. And it tears in on itself anew. 

And the Isle  _ burns _ . 

The town center is a wreck and the market half destroyed; but Uma doesn’t see it for herself. Harry stumbles into her cabin with his face flushed and eyes half lidded. He stumbles, falls, an anchor sinking in the sea instead of the breeze floating above it. She reaches for him, instantly, automatically, kneeling on the ground with one hand curled around his wrist and the other tucking against the side of his head. He leans into her palm automatically, eyes flickering shut as he lets out a sigh; her palm is cool, and his skin is  _ blistering.  _

She helps him stand, lets him lean on her with his arms draped limply over her shoulders, and they shuffle slowly to her bed. He falls onto her mattress with a groan, face first into her pillow, and Uma’s got to slap at his shoulder a little before he roles over to face her, hair plastered to his forehead and eyes hazy, the sky clouded over. 

“Uma,” Harry says, breathily, “I think I’ve gotta fever,” 

“It’s kind of obvious,” Uma tells him, arms crossed as she crouches down next to him, “Stay here. I’m gonna get a wet rag.” After a moment she tugs on the sleeves of his coat, “And take that off before you bake.”

By the time she’s back with a bowl and a rag, Harry’s fallen asleep, his jacket pooled on the floor and his arms tucked against his chest. She places the bowl on her desk and dips the rag in, making a face as water spills over the side, but wrings it out regardless and brushes Harry’s bangs back so that she can spread the cloth over his forehead. He sighs in his sleep, forehead scrunching, and Uma sits down on the edge of her bed next to him, her back pressed against his thighs. 

(Uma wonders if she’ll ever stop worrying about him.)

The Isle burns and Uma doesn’t see it the next day either; Harry’s still sick, so she brings him and Gil to the Shoppe and tells the rest of the crew to lock the chaos out of the wharf and keep the looters from torching her turf.

If Harry can’t be on the front lines than neither can Gil; people will suspect things if her left hand is razing the streets and not the right. But if she keeps both of them by her side people will assume she’s keeping her cards close to her chest, keeping her most powerful players at the center of her territory to hold it instead of expanding it. The ocean retreating in order to make a wave rise.

She tells Gil Harry’s just having a bad reaction to the barrier, and hopes it’s true. 

(It’s not.)

The rest of the Isle recovers. The triplets loose their vertigo and Bonnie abandons her bucket. Mad Maddy Mim and her sisters are seen raiding stands in the market and Jonas kicks two arrogant looters into the bay with help from one of Harriet’s sirens. Sickness fades days after their magic; the storm passes and everyone seems to find their sea legs again.

Not Harry.

His skin is still ashen; cold and clammy, goosebumps ever present along the backs of his arms. He doesn’t take his jacket off, keeps it zipped up with the sleeves on, and spends most of Uma’s shifts lurking in the kitchen by the stove. 

It comes to a head a week after they fail to escape. Harry collapses onto the rail of the ship and vomits into the bay, eyes bright with fever and forehead shining with sweat. His cheeks are flushed when Gil manages to pull him off and it’s the only color in his skin Uma has seen in  _ days _ . 

When they finally get him, stumbling and half-rag doll, into his cabin, and wrestle his old red jacket off, he’s shaking violently from cold and his shirt is drenched with sweat. Uma swears, pushing him into bed and watches as he instinctively grabs at his threadbare blanket to cover him as she drapes his duffel coat over the back of a chair. 

“Gil,” Uma says, grabbing her friend by the arm. Gil’s already half out of the room—they’ve played this song and dance for the past four days, lowering Harry’s fever with a rag but never quite managing to break it. “You watch him. I’ll send Desiree down with the water.”

Gil nods, arms tucked into each other as he rocks onto the back of his heels. 

“I’ll be back in an hour,” She reassures, squeezing his bicep, and then hesitates for a moment before saying, “I have to talk to Harriet.”

There was a barge coming in tomorrow.

And the King had just announced an embargo. 

For the safety of the crews and to prevent future escape, the Isle of the Lost would only receive barges once a month. Indefinitely.

They had all been terrified Auradon would retaliate against them for Maleficent’s actions. Half the people stuck there knew first hand that the crown ruled guilty by association. That fear had turned to chaos, into a storm. A hurricane that swept over the Isle until it turned the looting of Bargain Castle into a full fledged riot when Uma hadn’t been looking. 

They all knew Auradon would get it’s revenge. But good always needs an excuse.

The Isle gives it. 

Uma walks off her ship and picks through the docks. She’s not a storm, but she’s building, and the people on the wharf recognize gathering clouds. She knocks past a few people, hand on her sword, and weaves through the stands with an expert ease. The docks are a special kind of organized chaos; messy and violent and stiff with seasalt, but after sixteen years she could walk her way around these stalls with a blindfold tied across her eyes. Always moving, always changing, but, fundamentally, the same. 

The barges bring  _ everything _ to the Isle. Of all the places that can afford to be in constant upheaval, this isn’t one of them. 

Her ship and the Chip Shoppe aren’t very far; crossing from one to the other these past few days means the most she’s seen of the riots is the billowing clouds of smoke floating up from town center, carrying screams and shouts in the light of day and the dead of night. She goes farther inland today, to find Harriet. 

She struggles now, to think of Mal’s turf as her own, to remember that it’s technically  _ her _ territory dancing with flames and painted in blood. But Anthony Tremaine came to her Shoppe two days ago with a shelf’s worth of products from his grandmother’s salon. Ash mixed in his hair and streaking down his cheek; he reminds her that she runs a protection racket for a reason. 

Anthony’s part of Mad Maddy’s gang, but he lives in her territory. She takes the bag and his sisters and brother and cousins, and promises to give them a space to sleep until the riots are through. Dizzy stares at her with a sort of muted horror, and Uma raises an eyebrow back. The girl was friends with Evie, practically  _ sisters _ , and Uma stole the only other one she had, placed a sword in Dezi’s hand and streaked war paint under her eyes. 

(Held her hand while Gil stitched up her back, pressed a wet rag to the welts along her arms and the side of her head. Family means a lot to Uma, but she will never feel bad for taking Desiree from hers.)

Desiree is stiff and awkward around them—they were all so young when she left, and Angela and Dexter don’t even remember her. No one says anything and they let the tension sit, heavy in the air like humidity. Anna deals with it best out of all of them. The riots left her with a glass cut across her temple, but she still smiled at Gil and waved at Harry, bounded up to Uma at the end of her shift and earnestly asked if she could help feed Lagan and Derelict.

Uma lets her. It’s one less chore in the end. 

There are other people here from Mal’s turf, too. None of the big name players—none of them need to take refuge. The Faciliers have barricaded themselves into their shop and her Uncle sealed his cave, but she passes Diego De Vil and the Badun cousins as they buy fish from a stand; Diego’s hair all dark with ash, and Jace bearing a nasty burn on his bicep. 

The wharf is on edge. Quieter than usual, and it lets the sounds trickle in from town center. She’s farther inland, now, and can smell the smoke over the sea and rotting fish. Violence is common on the Isle but arson isn’t; when you can’t escape the smoke you learn to be careful with fire. People play with molotovs, and sometimes buildings go up in hungry flames, but the Isle has never seen anything like this except maybe in its earliest days.

One way or another the embargo is going to stop these riots, Uma knows, as she heads towards the Inlet. Life is a fire—and right now, on the Isle, every single one of them is flared, hot, and dangerous. But you cut the fuel, cut the barges, cut the food, clothes, and medicine—then the fire will shrink, recede to embers who know their place.

Who cares how many are snuffed out in the process? Not Auradon.

Never Auradon. 

They don’t care if Harry lives or dies, but Uma does. In a just world she could brew a potion or whisper a spell and let the fever dissolve into a warm breeze that dances and dissipates as the flush fades from Harry’s cheeks. In a just world he wouldn’t be sick in the first place. 

But Uma doesn’t live in a just world and she doubts she ever will. Justice is for heroes; villains only get revenge. 

(Uma will take what she can get. She never could afford to be picky.)

Uma finds Harriet working the cashier in her father’s shop, lazily leaning against the counter as she picks at her nails with a switchblade. There’s no customers, but Squeaky Smee is sitting in the corner with a book, and greets her quietly when she walks in. 

If Harry’s eyes are blue like the sky, pale and bright, constantly marred with the dark, swirling clouds that hover above the Isle, than Harriet’s eyes are like the ocean, deep and clear and dangerous, no matter her mood. Harriet turns her gaze on Uma as she enters, a question and a challenge all rolled into one. 

Uma doesn’t hold the sea in her eyes, but she’s held it and the power it wields in her chest since the day she was born. She greets Harriet with a smile, crosses her arms and leans into her hip.

“So,” She goes, “Heard about the embargo?”

“No small talk?” Harriet counters, accent thick and lips stained deep pink as she matches Uma’s smile with a grin, “I’m almost insulted. I thought we were friends.”

“Allies,” Uma corrects, smile widening as she steps closer to the counter, “I didn’t want to waste your time. I’ve come to negotiate.”

“We don’t have a return policy, ” Harriet shoots back with a laugh, snapping her switchblade to jab at the sign hanging over the register, “So I’m afraid you’ll have to keep my brother.”

“Shame,” Uma tilts her head up, “I was hoping to trade him in for Callista Jane.” 

CJ wasn’t part of Harriet’s crew, necessarily. At least, not anymore than she was of Uma’s. CJ’s never had the patience for a full time crew, and bounced between the siblings who raised her every other week. She was a good pirate, a great sailor, but a flighty thief at heart and didn’t how to lead or be led for longer than a month at a time. 

Harriet’s brow furrows, “Sorry,” She says sharply, “But my sister isn’t in stock. I haven’t seen her in two weeks.”

CJ’s disappeared for longer than that. Uma remembers the first time it happened; Harriet was thirteen, Harry was ten, and CJ was  _ seven _ . She’d wandered off for two days and came back with mud in her hair, a gap-toothed smile, and a large seashell gripped between her hands. Harry ditched school, ditched her, and scoured the Isle with a fervent manic, hair sticking up at all angles and bags carved under his eyes. Harriet had ordered her whole crew to search, and half her father’s too, up and down the beaches and into the caves, calling out CJ’s name and hoping that when they found her she wasn’t a corpse. 

She leaves a note when she goes now. Always antsy, always fidgeting, always wanting to  _ move, sail, explore _ , with barely any room to do it. Harriet’s always irritable when she disappears for too long and Harry struggles to sleep. 

Two weeks ago she slipped a piece of paper into a bottle and left it in front of Harry’s cabin. She was supposed to have been back four days ago, Uma thinks, with Harriet’s crew instead of hers, because Callista Jane had been getting sick of bunking with her brother and  _ Seven Deaths _ was large enough that Harriet could afford to give her sister her own room. 

Uma hadn’t forgotten about her—she’d just assumed that CJ had made her way back to Harriet and was lying low until the riots faded out, preoccupied with Harry and keeping her crew out of trouble. 

(That doesn’t stop the guilt from burning hot in her gut.)

“She’s probably just hiding out with Freddie,” Uma offers, instead of a clever rebuttal, “The Facilier’s locked up before the riots. CJ’s good at making her escape when she has to.”

“Yeah,” Harriet says, snapping her switchblade closed and squeezing it tight between her fingers, leaning over the counter, “What did you come here for, again?”

“I didn’t say,” Uma rolls her shoulders back and lets the dismissal wash over her like a wave as she places her arms on the counter. Harriet’s tall and uses every inch of her height as an intimidating advantage, but Uma hasn’t survived on the Isle this long to let a little posture change throw off her game.

“So say it now.”

“I heard half your crew was there when the riots started,” Uma leans in closer, tipping her chin up and lifting her palm to prop it, smiling lazily, “Looting Bargain Castle, weren’t they?”

Harriet snorts, “Like your crew didn’t when they took the turf,” She deflects, and Uma shrugs in admission. Bonnie  _ had _ lit Mal’s bedroom on fire, but not before stealing a dozen bottles of nail polish and all the clothes she could find.

“Sure,” Uma agrees easily, “But I didn’t loose half of mine when a molotov burst in the middle of a crowd.”

It had been an accident, apparently. The Stabbington brothers were regulars, and two days ago one of them showed up with a half-healed burn trailing up his arm and across his shoulders. One of the Ratcliff boys had gotten cocky, tried to take advantage of the chaos to bust up a window, but had underestimated his arm and sent the bottle bomb into a crowd instead of a storefront. The molotov hadn’t been strong enough to do any real damage, but dozens of people had gotten nasty burns. 

“Burns heal,” Harriet tells her blithely, “Especially when you have bandages.”

Uma’s smile curls higher, teeth bearing dangerously. Uma owns the docks but Harriet gets the barges; the deal they made years ago, when their gangs took the wharf from Hook. Harriet already had  _ Seven Deaths _ , then, but Uma was without a ship and desperate for turf to stand on. Being the only person on the Isle with the power to stand up to Maleficent wasn’t a bad thing either. 

Harriet gets the barges and first access to everything. Picks out the best stuff with her crew before giving it to Uma, who sends half to the market and leaves the rest as free game. She gets first crack at food, clothes, medicine; keeps some, and sells the rest to line her coffers. 

“Not before tomorrow,” Uma says, “It’s gonna be a bloodbath.”

The barges bring  _ everything _ to the Isle. With the embargo, Uma doubts many people will be willing to wait for it to go to the market.

Harriet knows it, too. Something in her expression shifts. She leans back, palms flat and arms straight, head tilted to the side as she examines Uma.

“What do you want?” Harriet says, after a moment of deliberation. Uma lets her smile fall, reaching back with one hand to thumb against the handle of her sword. 

“Medicine,” She says, automatically, “For fevers.” 

“That it?” Harriet asks skeptically, eyebrow raised and mouth quirked in question. 

“This time.” Uma confirms, sticking her hand out to shake. Harriet reaches out, fingers brushing Uma palm before she swipes her hand upwards, leaving it hanging midair.

“Who’s sick?” She asks. Harriet’s self control is carefully cultivated, but her eyes always carry a slight spark of madness. Unpredictable and tumultuous as the ocean— to anyone who doesn’t know her. Uma sees it now, the way it flares like she knows the answer but has to bring herself to ask.

“Who do you  _ think _ ,” Uma spits out, impatience getting the better of her, slamming her palm on the counter, before holding it up again in challenge, “ _ Seven seas, _ just shake my hand. You’re getting better end of the deal. My crew boxes out the riff-raff  _ and _ your younger brother lives.”

“For now,” Harriet says flatly, before finally settling her hand in Uma’s, squeezing tight. She looks away and swallows; a moment of weakness as her shoulders shudder. Uma says nothing; she bears the burden of Harry’s life now, but this weight has been Harriet’s since she was a girl and Uma still called Mal  _ friend. _ Quietly, beneath her breath, Harriet admits, “I thought he had more time...but Mum started getting fevers a year before she croaked.”

Harriet used to  _ freak _ when Harry got sick as a kid. The attention always made CJ jealous and Harry stifled, but she’d drown him in waves of attention and would barely  _ breathe _ until he was better.

Like each fever might be his last. 

A book clatters onto the ground.

“...Uncle Harry’s  _ dying? _ ” 

Ah,  _ shit.  _

Squeaky is staring at the both of them, eyes wide and glasses askew. His cheeks are red and he’s biting his lip and his eyes are watering—he’s so  _ young _ , not even ten, and still spends half his time being babysat by one of the Hooks after school. 

On the Isle you can’t ever forget where you are. Can’t think you’re safe for even a moment because that moment will end. Uma hasn’t lived this long,  _ survived _ this long, by ignoring her surroundings. Gods above, she feels like she’s been socked in the stomach. How did she forget Squeaky was there?

How did  _ Harriet? _

“Come ‘ere, Squeaky,” Harriet’s straightened, and she gestures at the young Smee, who hesitantly approaches the counter. Uma leans off it, and Harriet scoops Squeaky off the ground and hefts him next to the cash register. She leans in close to him, and holds one finger in front of his face, “Listen to me, close little Smee,” 

Squeaky nods rapidly, “Yes, Aunt Harriet.”

“Don’t interrupt me,” Harriet scowls in admonishment, cuffing Squeaky gently over the head, “Now, I know you don’t keep secrets from Squirmy—”

“Pirates don’t keep things from their crew!” Squeaky says automatically, lifting his head and adjusting his beanie. He looks less like he wants to cry now, but his nose is still red and he’s fiddling the sleeves of his denim jacket.

“What did I just say?” Harriet tells him, but this time her tone is fonder, less hard, “You’re right, I told you that. But listen. Sometimes Captains need to keep secrets. Even from their first mates.”

“Even from Sammy?” Harriet doesn’t do more than sigh after that interruption. Squeaky Smee like a little wave; small and persistent. He’s quiet with most people—Uma doesn’t think she’s ever heard him say more than a dozen words when Harry’s watching him at the Chip Shoppe— but he’s positively  _ chatty  _ around Harriet, and the eldest Hook knows it. 

“Yeah,” Harriet tells him, “Now you know I tell your brother everything, lad. But not this. I’m only tellin’ you because we screwed up.”

Massively. But that doesn’t stop her making at face at Harriet over Squeaky’s shoulder, because she wasn’t the one who said Harry was going to  _ croak. _ For years all Uma had on the Isle was  _ pride _ . She doesn’t like to let it get bruised. But she doesn’t like to waste time, either, and arguing about something pointless in the face of  _ this _ would be nothing more than a distraction.

(She’s made her deal. She wants to go home. Check on Harry.)

“My brother is sick,” Harriet says gently, placing a hand on Squeaky’s knee. She’s got a talent with kids few on the Isle can match, and Squeaky relaxes a little under her touch, “It makes him weak. So we can’t tell anyone. I know, and CJ knows, and Uma knows, but no one else.”

Not even Gil.

“And he’s...dying?” Squeaky asks quietly, eyes downcast. 

“Maybe soon,” Harriet tells him, “Not right now.”

“He should be better with medicine,” Uma interrupts, interjecting for the first time, and Squeaky stretches his head to look at her over his shoulder. Uma shoots the kid a small, solemn smile, “The barrier made it worse. But this is the first time it’s happened, so we have time.”

How much Uma doesn’t know. At least a year, now. At  _ most _ a year. 

“You can get medicine though, right?” Squeaky says, turning to Harriet, confidence lacing his question, and eyes large, “You got it that time Sammy was sick.”

“I’ll get it this time, too,” Harriet reassures him, briefly cupping his cheek in her palm before glancing at Uma and letting her hand fall, “I’ll get it every time if it helps, okay?”

Uma’s skin crawls a little, at that. She works in deals, in contracts and bargains and treaties. It’s one of the few lessons her mother taught her, and she takes it to heart. Nothing is fair on the Isle of the Lost, but Uma makes her deals as close to that as she can get; up front prices and no second catch, clear wording and clear intent, because honestly is rare and Uma wants to be respected, not just feared. 

But on the Isle you use, abuse every advantage you have. You play dirty, aim below the belt and do everything it takes to survive, and you never forget the tools you have at your disposal lest you die for it. Uma’s a sea witch with no magic and a pirate with barely any room to sail; honestly is nice, but it’s also an ideal and ideals don’t mean much when you can’t always afford to have them.

Uma’s ultimate ace against Harriet—rarely used, as aces should always be, lest they loose their edge—will always be Harry, because she loves him. 

It’s… uncomfortable taking advantage of that, much less acknowledging it. Not just because that kind of leverage breeds resentment when over used, and resentment breeds betrayal. Not even because Harriet is an ally, an almost-friend.

But because Ursula was brought down by love and knows it’s power, made sure her daughter did too. Love makes people desperate, and desperation can make people dangerous. It’s powerful, an easily wielded weapon in both directions, but to use it against someone, like how Ursula did Ariel, is something to be saved as a last resort. 

And Uma will not make her mother’s mistakes. 

So Uma makes deals with Harriet even when she doesn’t have to. Even though Harriet would hand over the medicine for free because it was for  _ Harry,  _ who will always be  _ Harriet’s little brother _ to the older girl, even before  _ Uma’s first mate. _ It’s a weakness—not the love itself, but the things she’s willing to do for it. 

Harriet would’ve handed the medicine over free. Even though nothing is free on the Isle of the Lost, not even love. Especially not love. 

Harriet looks away from Uma, and back at Squeaky, steady and reassuring, and Squeaky nods, fingers digging into his jeans, as he meets Harriet’s eyes. 

“Okay,” Squeaky says nervously, “I don’t want Uncle Harry to die.”

“He won’t,” Uma tells Squeaky firmly, before she can think any better of it, “I’ll get him out of here before that happens.”

Harriet purses her lips but Squeaky smiles, small and bright, and the weight in her chest abites, just a little. Uma can’t guarantee anything, but she shoved herself into power by sheer perseverance. She is a river chipping away at rock to form a canyon, eroding and  _ forcing _ a place for herself in the world, in the Isle. 

She’ll force her way out, too. 

(She has to.)

“You should leave,” Harriet tells her, after a long moment, “My crew’ll meet yours on the docks at dawn.” 

Uma leaves, patting Squeaky twice on the arm as she goes. He waves at her, wiping at his eyes with the other end, and when Uma looks back, a dozen steps from the door, she can see through the one of the old, stained windows, that Squeaky has tucked himself into Harriet’s chest and she’s wrapped her arms around him. 

A melancholy smile tugs at her lips, and she turns around and heads home. 

Her stomach churns a little, as she makes her way back to her sect of the docks and boards the ship. She feels like a boat in choppy waters, rocking anxiously over little waves and waiting for a storm to hit. It’s always hard, she thinks, being faced with doubt that isn’t her own. It calls to part of her, young and alone and sitting on the beach, with shrimp stiff in her hair and her mother’s disappointed  _ I told you so _ ’s ringing in her ears. 

It’s not even that Harriet doubts her. It’s that Uma has elected herself to a near impossible task, and being reminded of that sheer  _ impossibility _ , hearing the way Squeaky’s voice broke over his shaky question, adds another weight to it. Not one of reality—Harry’s fever has been burning since the barrier was reestablished, and that’s all the reminder she could ever need—but one of dread. 

Uma  _ knows _ that her chances aren’t good on this. No one’s managed to escape the Isle in twenty years, and no matter how hard she works, no matter how hard she tries, no matter how hard she  _ pushes _ herself—there’s no guarantee that she’ll be the one to do it. 

No guarantee that she’ll be _good_ _enough_ to do it.

(Has she  _ ever _ been good enough for anybody? Her foot comes down hard on a step and her hand slaps flat against the wall as her breath hitches, but no,  _ no _ , she  _ knows _ she’s good enough. Maybe not for Auradon, or her mother, or Mal, but she’s good enough for her crew, good enough to earn a ship, and good enough for the Isle. She’s good enough to win.)

Everything on the Isle of the Lost is a tragedy, a trope; the kind of thing the people in Auradon would rail on and rally against if they weren’t the ones doing it. 

The caecilia cursed with two legs. The dying fairy who wants to fly. The arrogant hunter’s son who’s kind instead of cruel. 

Uma wants more than that. Than to just be the villain in some hero’s happily ever after. But she can’t get more,  _ be _ more, on the Isle. None of them can. 

(When Harry dies, she doesn’t want his legacy to be  _ Hook’s only son _ .)

She desperately wants to get off. That doesn’t mean she can.

Uma sighs, and comes to a stop in front of Harry’s cabin. Her hand curls over the handle and she pinches her eyes shut. She’s getting ahead of herself, trying to go against a current that isn’t even fully formed. She has to deal with her problems as they come, deal with each wave as they rise, and not get so focused with the future that she drowns in the present. 

She takes a slow breath, lets her heart rate lower, and opens the cabin door.

Uma finds Harry asleep, curled into himself with sweat damp hair. Gil is sitting at his side, a bowl of water cupped between his hands and his brow furrowed. The tightness in her chest unwinds just a bit at the sight.

“I’m back,” Uma tells him, knocking twice against the open door frame before coming in, “Scooch, Gil.” 

There’s only one chair in Harry’s room and Gil slides over on it so Uma can claim half. His nail taps an incessant, unsteady beat against the metal of the bowl and it irritates her down to her bones, but just this once she doesn’t make him stop. 

He’s just as scared as she is. 

“Hold it steady,” She says, voice low, tapping two fingers against the bowl and reaching over to yank the rag from Harry’s forehead. Gil’s fingers curl over the rim and get splashed as she redunks the rag and wrings it out before she spreads it over Harry’s forehead again. 

“Harriet’s gonna look for medicine on the barge, tomorrow,” Uma says, minutes later, pressing their arms together to quietly get his attention. 

“That’s good,” Gil says, subdued, running the pad of his thumb over the bowl’s rim, “Do you think he’ll—I mean, he’ll be alright won’t he? It’s like the others. The barrier.” 

Uma’s crew is filled with open secrets. Things that they all implicitly know but don’t speak of anywhere outside the ship. Desiree’s parentage is one of them; and now Harry’s magic has become another. 

Uma leans her head on Gil’s shoulder and sighs, “He’ll be fine this time,” She tells him, relishes in the way his shoulders relax in relief underneath her. The way he trusts her at her word, like she’s a compass who always points north. 

A moment passes, Harry shifts in his sleep and Gil readjusts the rag. They sit together, uncomfortably, neither of them willing to move just yet. Water lingering in a tide pool, a breeze caught in a sail. 

But the ocean is like clockwork, and low tide is always replaced by high; the tide pool disappears and Uma stands to leave.

“Uma,” Gil says, when she’s opening the cabin door, voice soft and barely audible over the sound of Harry’s breathing and the sound of the docks coming in through the porthole, “Will Harry be fine the next time, too?”

Perceptive. 

Uma wishes he wasn’t.

(She wishes Harry could tell him.)

“I don’t know,” She says raw, honest, like sea water stinging at a wound. Gil nods, slowly, but doesn’t prod.  _ I wish I did,  _ she doesn’t say. 

“You know,” Uma starts, swallows, and looks at him, “You know I’m gonna get us all of this Isle, don’t you, Gil?”

“Of course you are,” Gil says, serious but eyes bright, “You’re Uma, Uma.”

“Good,” She says, throat tight. There’s something addicting about being known, she thinks. About Gil saying  _ Uma _ and meaning  _ her _ , not daughter of Ursula, “Just wanted to double check. You’re forgetful, sometimes.”

It’s teasing, or at least meant to be. But her tone doesn’t carry it, exhaustion dogging down her words and making them sound solemn and sad. Gil’s not one of her best friends for no reason though, tilts his head to the side and smiles up at her.

“Yeah, I am,” Gil agrees, amicable as always, and not for the first time she knows in her gut he would  _ thrive _ off this trash heap. As much as any of them would and maybe more, “But not about that.”

“Yeah, maybe not.” She twists two of her braids together and smiles as she leans against the doorframe, “I’ve got to head to the Chip Shoppe, now. I’ll see you later.”

The next morning Uma shuts the docks down. She leaves Claudine and Cook to open the Shoppe, and has Desiree watch over Harry and the triplets. Desiree’s an ace with her crossbow and a fine hand with her sword, but if Harry’s the only missing member from her crew during this—well, not everyone on the wharf is an idiot, and villains are drawn to weakness like sharks to blood. Desiree hands Uma her sword and hooks herself into the netting with a crossbolt already loaded. 

By the time the barrier crackles gold around the barge ship, Harriet’s standing at the start of the dock, wearing her red leather like armor with a cutlass in her hand and Sammy Smee at her side. She has three others from her crew standing behind them, quick and fast kids with burlap sacks in their hands and knives buckled on their belts. 

Uma and the rest of the crew fan around them, like a ripple echoing outward in a pond. Uma’s sword with it’s gilded blue handle is still in her sheath, but she holds Desiree’s loosely in her left hand. Uma rarely gets to dual wield in public, but this isn’t the sort of fight to have fun in, and an extra sword just makes her extra dangerous. 

Gil is at her right, one hand hooked over his belt and the other holding his saber at his side. He’s the best duelist she’s got, one of the best on the Isle, clean and intimidating, but never afraid to fight dirty. If the sight of her and Harriet together wasn’t enough to drive half the rabble away, than Gil certainly will. 

Then they’d be left with only the truly dangerous. The truly desperate. 

It lasts hours. By the time it’s over Uma and her crew are drenched; in sweat that’s theirs and blood that both is and isn’t, like a storm rolled in and poured atop them but when it and it’s furious rain and wind retreated they’re all still standing. 

Uma gets a deep cut across her arm from a particularly daring card soldier and it stings like all hell even after Gil sews it up for her. But it’s all worth it in the end, because now more than  _ ever  _ the Isle knows her name and not to mess with her. That her crew is loyal, dangerous, deadly;  _ her _ pirates until the very end. 

Harriet slips a half filled bottle of ibuprofen with a cracked lid into her jacket pocket. Uma wipes the blood from her face and grins. 

Harry’s fever breaks. 

Uma breathes a little easier. 

The riots start winding down. Town center still burns for days after the barge arrives, but it’s contained; no longer in danger of spreading. It’s mostly the younger Isle residents keeping it going now, hyped up on rage and anger and destruction; too focused on idles, on  _ evil _ , to realize that if they can’t secure food soon they’re screwed.

The Shoppe’s been getting more customers recently because of it. The fishing industry is headed by the pirates, and none of them are willing to skimp Ursula her cut, even with the embargo. Paying for a surefire meal was starting to look better to most than scavenging for one, especially when the next barge almost four weeks away.

Her crew normally only hangs around the Shoppe during her shifts, which used to be six days a week from dusk to dawn, but she’s been able to take a handful of afternoons off since Claudine joined up. Frollo’s only daughter is fire, deadly with a knife, but still small, smoldering embers and not yet a month away from her father. She has a few of her crew hang around during the girl’s solo shift just in case, and takes the rest to scare off the looters from  _ Curl Up and Dye _ so Anthony can take his siblings home.

Uma’s willing to admit she likes kids. But dealing with six of Desiree’s younger cousins and siblings when there’s a riot on, Harry’s half-dying from fever, and an embargo just entered play—well, it hasn’t exactly endeared her to any of the little Tremaines, except maybe Anna.

Most of the crew are still nursing wounds from the barge fight and Uma’s cut still itches fiercely, but Harry missed the scuffle altogether and thoroughly enjoys himself; laughing as people freeze at the sight of his hook and gleefully knocking their legs from out under them. His skin is still a little too pale, and he collapses a little too heavily into a chair afterwards, but the shine of fever is gone from his eyes and he wears short sleeves without shaking. 

None of them—her crew or the looters—leave with anything worse than a cut or a bruise. This is intimidation, partly, but a reminder, mostly, that her crew is there to cause and prevent chaos in equal measures. 

The next day is, conveniently, collection day. Normally it’s just Bonnie and Harry—her two most intimidating crewmates—but they’re not just on the wharf, they’re going into the new territory proper, as far into it without hitting the riots as they can get. She sends Gil and Gonzo with them too, her muscle, and they take the more regular territories that have been paying up for years. 

Bonnie comes back with a shiner and a grin, Harry draped over her shoulders and laughing madly. It brings color back into his cheeks, flushes them with warmth that doesn’t go away even as they empty their pockets over at Jonas’s table. The four of them count out the bills, smooth them out then fold them over each other. Uma secures them with a thin rubber band and tucks them into her jacket, zipping it half up over her apron. 

Within twenty minutes Gil and Gonzo are back with their share, and she’s tucking the usual amount into her coat too. Half the money goes into the ship’s funds—a large, uncracked mason jar painted blue that’s hidden deep in one of the  _ Lost Revenge _ ’s storage rooms that they use to save up for emergencies—and the rest is divided amongst the crew. 

When she goes up to the kitchen to get trays from Cook for them, someone’s turned the television on. Uma doesn’t bother turning it back off; the Auradonian propaganda is mindless drivel, but at the very least it’s something to watch. 

She gives Cook their usual orders, and leans against the doorframe. Not for the first time she thinks about how the Chip Shoppe is hers in all but name. When her mother dies— _ if _ she dies, or maybe just gets too lazy and Uma gets too old—it will be. Looking across the dining room, across concrete floors and wooden tables, bright decorations and shady customers, she knows this is her future. She’ll end up changing the name to  _ Uma’s _ Fish and Chippe Shoppe instead of  _ Ursula’s _ . She’ll hire on more people, triple the staff and shorten the shifts, and  _ pay _ people for it. Finally take a cut of the money.

She’ll be her mother’s legacy. Take over the Isle. Might earn a smidgen of her mother’s pride. Be  _ Ursula’s  _ daughter. Be a  _ villain _ . Be  _ evil. _

(On the Isle, they say evil is the only real way to win.)

(If it was, Uma thinks, than they wouldn’t be here in the first place.) 

Uma grits her molars, digs her fingers into her arms, and thinks,  _ knows _ that she wants more than this. To be the best of the losers, to be the power in a prison.

_ “... Although we in Auradon initially had our doubts, it really is affirming to learn that even the kids of the most horrible villains have the potential for good. A week after the near disastrous coronation, and the four lucky Villain kids seem to be settling in better than ever according to our confidential source at Auradon Prep.” _

Uma wants to swear. The television was supposed to be  _ muted _ specifically so she didn’t have to deal with hearing this garbage. Working at the Shoppe was already its own kind of hell—the  _ last _ thing she needed was to have this sugary sweet propaganda as a backtrack, especially after the week she’s had.

She turns, slams her fist against the doorframe, mouth opening to demand that Bonnie mute the television set—

_ “...this, of course means that King Ben’s degree to allow the rest of the Isle children a chance at redemption, will likely now be passed in full...” _

“—Clam up!” Is what she shouts instead, moving suddenly, desperately forward in front of the television set, holding her hand up in an order, a  _ demand, _ “I said  _ quiet!” _

A semblance of silence finally falls over the Shoppe. They’re all staring at her, half the customers her crew, and both Harry and Gil are already startled out of their seats, and as they move towards her, Snow White’s high pitched voice rings across the Shoppe through old speakers. 

_ “...While there is no proof that any future children coming over to Auradon will be as open minded as the original four to the ideals of Good, the fact that King Ben’s program has successfully worked on the children of some of the baddest gives me faith that any future kids will see the light. Of course, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves! The Royal Household has yet to release a statement on any future timetable, so we here in Auradon should have a little more time to adjust to our new guests before we receive any more! Now, here with an exclusive scoop _ —”

Click.

Uma kills the power. The screen dissipates into static and she crosses her arms, chewing at the inside of her mouth. More than half the room is standing, now, including her crew. Every single one of them under twenty. 

Almost everyone on the Isle has tried to escape at one point or another. Some attempts better than others, but they’ve all reached for freedom, for warmth and light, intentions irrelevant, and been slapped away, stopped. Only five people have left the Isle in the past twenty years. 

All of them desperately want to be number six.

Freedom is freedom, even if it’s only a second thought given absentmindedly by Auradon. Pride bruises easily on the Isle, but from the way they’re all looking at her, at the television set, at each other, Uma knows each and every desperate, dangerous kid in her Shoppe would let their ego be torn to shreds for a chance to feel the warmth of the sun. 

Uma’s had her hopes shattered time and time again. Each time she feels the barrier beneath her fingertips or the chains around her chest. 

This isn’t hope. It’s a chance, a slim one, because if Uma knows Mal—and she does,  _ did _ , knows her cruelty if nothing else—than Uma and her crew are gonna be the last damn ones picked off this trash heap the second Auradon starts grabbing. 

That could take  _ years _ . Uma is patient, but not at the cost of someone’s life. Harry’s life, or any other member of her crew because as the days, weeks,  _ months _ drag on she realizes more and more what a death trap their home is. It’s a miracle they’ve all even lived this long, and Uma knows better than to tempt fate.

Uma knows better than to wait for good to save her from evil. 

(It’s almost seventeen years too late.)

But the rest of them—desperate kids who buy the cheapest thing on the menu, protected by her sword check and glare, kids who aren’t on her crew, kids like Claudine, with her eyes shining and hand clasped over her mouth, like Anna Tremaine, who’s visiting Desiree again, clutched against her cousin’s arm and gaping—this could maybe be enough for them.

This could get them out. This could save their lives.

Uma could take her crew and leave the Isle behind; guitless. She wouldn’t have to go after the wand, wouldn’t risk their first chance at freedom, wouldn’t go back for each and every kid born and semi-raised on this hellhole. 

She wouldn’t have to. 

“Maybe wait before you start to celebrate,” She drawls, propping her hand on her hip, gaze scanning the room. Excitement is brimming in everyone, even her crew, muted behind their eyes, and Gil has Harry’s arm gripped between his hands and is silently shaking it as he barely manages to hold back a grin, “None of us should trust the crown any farther than we can throw it. Especially now that Mal’s given the new King the royal run around.”

Her crew knows she’s getting them out one way or another. That she will pry the barrier open herself, let her fingers break and bleed, just so they can taste the freedom they were denied. They trust her; that doesn’t mean they don’t know she might fail.

She doesn’t have a concrete exit plan. A plan to find exits, not use them. What Uma offers is hope. 

Is she cruel to take  _ this _ hope from them, then? Just because it comes from Auradon? 

(She doesn’t think she cares. Hope isn’t meant to last on the Isle of the Lost. If she doesn’t take it, someone else will.) 

Hope is fragile and fragile things break, but Harry’s lasted sixteen years with delicate glass charms hanging from his throat and they haven’t shattered yet.

They all crave freedom. They’re the children of villains but they’ve never been  _ kids,  _ not really, because kids are innocent and they’ve all been guilty since the day they were born. 

Auradon owes them, Uma knows. 

Maybe, reluctantly, she can admit they owe the Isle children some hope too. 

“So don’t start packing your suitcases yet,” She says, reprimanding,  _ don’t think they’ll free us all,  _ but a smile curves onto her face, slight and sly, “But you might want to get one. Just in case.”

The tension ripples, dissipates, shatters. Nervous laughter bubbles up from Claudine, and Jonas sweeps his sisters into a hug, barely able to extend his arms around all three of them. Gil comes bouncing up to her, dragging Harry along with him, grinning all the way. She hides her smile in Gil’s hair, hugging him with one arm and Harry with the other, both bending down automatically so she could sling her arms around their shoulders. 

It’s a quiet celebration, not a loud one. There are adult villains scattered throughout the Shoppe, but this is  _ Uma’s _ turf and it’s one of the few places where no one except her mother can decry or deny her. 

_ Auradon _ might let them off the Isle. 

Hope is as contagious as Gil’s smile and Uma desperately tries not to catch it, because she doubts,  _ doubts _ , that Auradon will let them off before Uma escapes with her crew in tow. 

(Before Uma fails and they have to send Harry’s corpse adrift.)

They all know this, really. Each member of her crew knows that she will not wait around to be saved, to be gifted her stolen freedom back. 

But maybe, just once, just for now—as Desiree picks up Anna and spins them until the younger girl laughs, as Claudine tries to hide her tears—they can pretend. That they are not villains, but victims; that good will save them all. 

Uma tights her grip on Gil, on Harry, until all three of them are uncomfortably pressed together and Gil is trying to keep her braids from his mouth. She lets out a breath, slow, shaky, and presses her eyes shut; hears the glass charms chime. 

_ Hopes. Wishes.  _

Knows it won’t come true. 

Villains never win. If they did, she wouldn’t be here.

None of them would be. 

“We don’t need Boreadon’s help to leave the Isle,” Harry tells her, when they all finally pull back smile crooked and eyeliner smudged, “I bet they’ve got a waitlist. And we’ve got better places to be.”

“Like a rain forest!” Gil chimes in, enthusiastically off topic, “But Harry’s right. I mean, it’s not like Auradon was gonna help us leave in the first place, right? This just means we’ve got a back up plan for your back up plan!”

“Yeah,” Uma says, the word catching in her throat, “A back up plan for my back up plan. Every good pirate Captain needs one of those.”

“And a first mate,” Harry adds cheekily, sliding over to check their hips teasingly. 

“Plus a crew!” Gil nods along, grinning as he counts it off on his fingers, “And a ship! And you’ve got all of them!”

She does have all of them. 

Uma smiles.

There is no hope on the Isle of the Lost.

But for once, she thinks, this might be,  _ could be _ , the exception.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to call this chapter (and the next chapter) almost 15k words of uma angst that was supposed to be a 1.5k interlude before the Descendants 2 chapter. 
> 
> Oh well, this whole fic was supposed to be 5k, so that train has really already left the station. 
> 
> This chapter explores more of the state of the Isle after the coronation, including the embargo. According to the wiki, it was put into place to increase security after the coronation, and I have so many issues with it as you can see. What the fuck, Ben? 
> 
> Anyways, this chapter really introduces Harriet! I based the fact that she's closer with Harry than CJ purely based on the fact that Harry talks about her more than CJ in the books, lol. And I didn't really get to mention it, but I figured at least one Hook kid needs to inherit their Dad's love of fuchsia so she's got a nice clashing color scheme lol. 
> 
> Something else! Anna Tremaine is the only Tremaine OC that's gonna appear more regularly since she's reconnecting with Desiree, but I'm including a reference for how I've aged all of them below just in case there's any confusion:
> 
> Anastasia's Kids (at D2)  
> \- Anthony 19  
> \- Anna 13  
> \- Andrew 11  
> \- Anegela 7
> 
> Drizella's Kids (at D2)  
> \- Desiree 17  
> \- Dizzy 14  
> \- Declan 12  
> \- Dexter 10
> 
> I put a lot of thought into literally everything that happens in all the chapters, so if you want to talk/ask questions about it I'd be so thrilled to answer whether it be here or on tumblr as @dragonsarecats. 
> 
> Comments, as always, are my life blood and I cherish each and every one of them and reread them regularly, so please leave one if you can. Thanks so much for reading! :D


	4. Fist up in the firing line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Anti-Heroes Club, Interlude 2/2

There is no magic on the Isle of the Lost, but Uma walks in on Harry painting stars on the ceiling of his cabin one day, half on memory but all on instinct.

He’s balancing on a chair to reach the top of the cabin, a half empty paint can dangling from the crook of his elbow, and the handle of his hook bit tightly between his teeth. His jacket has been abandoned at the floor by his bed, and his tanktop is covered in spots of bright white that stand out against the old, tattered fabric. 

Fondness settles warm in her chest as she stands in the doorway, but Harry’s glass charms chime around his neck and the feeling quickly turns heavy, into an iron anchor that crashes down until it hits the bottom of her gut and all she can think as she looks at him, paint somehow caught in his hair, is that he’s dying.

Her facial expression sours, and she’s about to leave, find Gil or Gonzo, or any other member of her crew—one she can  _ look _ at without her stomach curdling and her heart pounding, blood rushing hot and fast in her ears—but then Harry turns, hook in hand, to see her standing in the doorway and grins sheepishly. 

He’s been dipping his fingers in paint to dot the stars and using the tip of his hook to scratch out the lines to connect them into constellations; it’s his cabin but it’s her ship, yet Harry just shrugs his shoulders and picks at the dried paint in his nails.

Maybe another day she would threaten and posture—raise one eyebrow and cross her arms, tell Harry that his map better be good and accurate lest she give his room to Gil and make him sleep in a storage closet—but today she can’t bring herself to do that. 

It’s been two weeks but she still looks at him and has to blink away the image of pale, feverish skin, hazy eyes, and sweat soaked hair—he’s  _ dying _ , even now, and it haunts her more than ever, leaves her tossing in bed and scribbling down half-coherent escape plans in the middle of the night. 

She shouldn’t treat him differently—she  _ shouldn’t _ . But Uma hasn’t been sleeping, instead spending the nights with her back pressed against the thin wall that divides their rooms, her ear against wood to hear him breathe. So Uma says nothing, just walks over to his bed, lies back, and waits for a sky form on the ceiling above her.

Harry observes her for a moment, head tilted to the side curiously, before he arches his back precariously. He presses his thumb to the center of the ceiling and tells her it’s Polaris; that fairies navigate at night. That the second star is how they find their way home, but the North Star is how they leave it.

Neither of them are visible on the Isle.

The bay is polluted, with murky waters and tiny fish; a pathetic substitution for the ocean, sure, but at least it’s  _ there _ . At least she can swim in it, tentacles or not, pollution or not and feel something settle in her chest as the tension relaxes in her shoulders and the smell of salt stings in her nose. 

Harry doesn’t even have  _ that _ . He can’t fly without wings or magic, or even truly see the sky—Uma doesn’t ever feel pity for Harry, she wouldn’t dare, but right now she feels the kind of cold, icey anger that always ends up fading to resentment, and she breathes out steadily as it attempts to freeze her veins.

The Isle is a prison; cruel even in it’s comforts. Providing enough to stay alive but never enough to  _ live _ , handing them snippets of their old lives: Hook’s ships, Cruella’s car, the Evil Queen’s castle. It’s taunting, maybe even more so than the barrier, because Uma’s only reminded that  _ her _ magic is being used to build her prison walls when she presses her hand against it to find that it feels familiar, but it mocks her mother in the stack of parchment and broken fishbone quills gathering dust in Uma’s old closest. 

They’ve learned to survive this, but the older Uma gets the more each day grates, like she’s a block of ice being chipped away at, like surviving today makes it less likely she’ll survive tomorrow, because she’s being bled dry. 

She finds herself in the crow’s nest a lot, recently. Even with his own little sky, Harry still can’t sleep most nights in his cabin, and the two of them spend an increasing amount of time passing a spyglass back and forth as he tries to get a glimpse of  _ something _ through the clouds while she stares over the ocean to Auradon’s coast and  _ wants.  _

The crow’s nest becomes comforting, in a way. The wood is splintering and permanently damp in some places and when Harry is there it’s crowed as all hell—her hair has gotten snagged four times, twice on his bracelets and twice on his coat—but for the first time she understands why Harry used to climb trees when they were kids and stay up there for hours.

It’s soothing. It creates a distance between herself and the weight of the world but the sharpness of the air in her throat grounds her, keeps her present to feel the goosebumps crawling underneath her sleeves and the smile inching across her face as Harry squints through the spyglass and declares, “Fuck _ , is _ that Scorpio?” 

It’s hard to look him in the eyes, these days. Otherwise her stomach lurges and her chest hurts and if it lasts too long then the back of her eyes start to burn. It’s  _ stupid _ , it is, she’s known Harry was dying for two goddamn years and didn’t act any differently but he gets a fever and suddenly it feels like it’s all rushing in—a wave caught her by surprise and she’s head over heels, doesn’t know up from down, and blood roaring like water in her ears. 

But it’s easier, two stories in the air and hidden in the dark. The villains all say love is a weakness on the Isle of the Lost; for the first time Uma’s beginning to understand why.

She’s off her game, dangerously so. Grossly sentimental—Claudine has Thursday afternoons off, now, spends them at Dragon Hall with Hadie in some sort of club, and all Uma could think about when she asked was how much she missed the Shark Swimming team at Serpent Prep and laughing with Gil as Harry got slapped in the face with a tail at the Croc Wrestling Club. 

Half of her wants to spend every free moment she has with him; bumping shoulders in the Shoppe, rigging dice games, tossing stale chunks of bread into each other’s mouth from five feet away—maybe she can finally get a good night sleep if she sleeps on Harry’s shoulder instead of the other way around. 

(Maybe his insomnia is starting to catch.)

But the rest of her never wants to look at him again, let dark eyes meet pale, at least until they’re off the Isle because Harry has always  _ been _ there for her, through thick and thin, and if she can’t be there for him, help untie the noose from his neck—then she’ll be just as weak and shrimpy as Mal always claimed.

And Harry will be dead.

It’s two opposing currents swirling in her mind until they collapse into a vortex, a whirlpool, and Uma is stuck standing on a piece of driftwood atop it; swaying in the storm, with no way to escape. 

Just another prison of her own making.

And just as she thinks she’s got it, secured her sea legs and planted her feet, steadied herself in the ocean, and flared her arms out to keep her balance, comes to terms with it all over again—Harry gets sick for the second time. Two months later.

Uma quickly finds out the crow’s nest isn’t half as soothing when she’s by herself. 

It’s just as bad as the first time. Maybe worse—at least last time she could  _ do _ something about it. Now, all she can do is be there with him, and wait for the medicine to work. 

He’s more coherent now. He didn’t stew in it for a week before they did anything, and Uma’s got enough pain killers now for at least half a dozen more boughts of this. She’s lying in the bed next to him, one hand curled on the pillow beside her face, as Harry talks. It’s late at night and she’s barely back from her Thursday shift, but Harry woke up an two hours ago and is still listless, desperately bored. Gil had been with them earlier, squeezed on the end with his legs thrown over both of theirs as he and Harry talked about the constellations on his ceiling. Uma doesn’t remember why he left, only that she kicked Harry in the leg when he complained and smiled at Gil as he stood. 

“You seen tense,” Harry tells her, a few stiff, silent minutes after Gil has gone, “Gold coin for your thoughts?”

“Like you can afford that,” She scoffs, “You didn’t even get the saying right.”

“Aye, but we’re pirates,” He insists, curving a hook with his finger. The real one was on the ground next to the mattress, but Uma laughs at him regardless, “Fine, then. I’ve got some change in my coat, somewhere. There’s probably a penny. Thoughts?”

“...I should’ve gotten us all off before now,” She admits lowly, “This—” She waves one of her hands at Harry, and he catches it with his own for a moment before she wiggles her fingers free, “—Stop that, I’m trying to say something!” He hums, and she scowls, “Listen, will you?”

“Aye, aye.”

“Good,” Uma sighs, “I’m gonna get us off. I know I will, even if I haven’t figured out how. But that whole stunt with the barrier moved the timetable up, fast and we both know it. Harriet said your Mom started getting like this a year before she died, and I don’t want to take any chances on you getting lucky.”

When they play dice in the Shoppe, the outcome is always rigged, the house always wins. Uma doesn’t take chances, doesn’t rely on luck; they’ve always failed her when it really counts. The only thing she can rely on is herself. 

When she wins, it isn’t ever up to chance. 

“Harriet’s a gossip and a giant pessimist,” He accuses, flippantly, “You can’t trust her on anything.”

“Now  _ you’re  _ changing the topic,” She tells him, with some amusement. 

“I bet she didn’t tell you Mum didn’t have any medicine when she got sick,” Harry says idly, rolling his head to the side to look at her balefully as he picks at the ends of his one long sleeved shirt, “She was sick for  _ weeks _ at a time. I dunno if it was the magic or the fever that killed her, but no matter which one tries to get me I still got more time than she does.”

_ Because of you _ , goes unsaid. 

Uma loves and hates Harry all at once; warmth flutters in her chest. He winks, exaggerated, face half-smushed against the pillow, and necklace spilling over the collar of his shirt. “So you’ve still got plenty of time to work your magic, Uma.”

He says it like there  _ is _ magic on the Isle of the Lost. Like it’s all wrapped up in her name.

Platitudes mean nothing to Uma but when they come from Harry they aren’t just that; it’s faith, pure and simple, belief weaved into every word. It settles something in her as she sighs, reaching out with one hand to run her fingers through Harry’s hair, and he leans into the touch, closing his eyes. 

He falls asleep like that, pining Uma’s arm awkwardly, and causing pins and needles to prickle in her palm. She manages to free her palm, and flop on her back; Harry’s mattress is small, old, and smells a little like rotten fish, but so are most things they find on the dock. She breaths out again, loud and heavy, and closes her eyes.

They burn behind the lids. 

Three days later, Mad Maddy comes bursting into the Shoppe with Ginny Gothel on her heels. Harry’s not there, down at the Inlet to place bets while Harriet takes her frustrations out on the crocodiles; Callista Jane is still missing, even now, and not even Freddie Facilier has seen hide or hair of her for weeks. Gil’s gone too, out at the market with Desiree to pick at the fabrics and buy new thread to fix the tear in the main sail. 

Without her second and third in command, Jonas is automatically, instantly at her side. The triplets fan out behind them, two on Uma’s left, and one on Jonas’s right, silent but threatening. They reach up past Uma’s shoulder now, tall with the colorful hair Jonas never seemed to inherit, and Moira is gripping the bow of her violin low at her side, like she’s about to bludgeon someone with it.

Maddy isn’t cowed though. She and Uma are the two remaining big legacy powers on the Isle. Collectively their turf stretches over more than half of it; Uma having taken what Mal left behind and Maddy having taken it from Ginny. 

Mal’s always outclassed the other gangs with her parentage, but against Uma people are always outnumbered. 

To be a gang leader you need an edge, something hard and sharp for other people to cut themselves on. A blade that will never rust or go dull. 

Harriet’s is her pragmatism and Anthony’s was his adaptability. Ginny’s  _ was _ precariously balanced; as nonthreatening as a villain could be, while still being a  _ threat _ . It worked well, kept her in power for years, but when people needed, wanted,  _ had to have _ turf, it was her they took it from. 

But this time Maddy didn’t just take her turf, she took her  _ gang _ , absorbed it completely and added to her numbers. It’s not enough to rival Uma’s crew, not nearly, because pirate crews are large and sprawling and ever-expanding; slapped together by trust and desperation and a love of the sea. It’s formidable though. Maddy and Jade and Ginny and both the Gaston’s. Five people. Maybe six, with Anthony, but he’s not here and Ginny is, but even then that’s nothing compared to fourteen. 

Maddy’s edge has always been her violence, her willingness to get down in the dirt and brawl. She could win fights with nothing but her wit and a dagger, two feet long and strapped at her waist for all to see. 

The only thing that kept Maddy grounded was herself, a volatile sort of control that always seemed to  _ crack _ just a little around Mal.

(Uma knows the feeling.)

Mal was just as picky with her friends as she was her allies, and if it weren’t for her mother she probably would’ve alienated more than half the Isle by the time they were thirteen. People started to steer clear of her unless their parents forced them otherwise and no one wanted to get in the crosshairs. 

By then everyone knew about  _ Shrimpy. _

After Uma, Mal realized that opposites could be volatile and learned like attracts like; earth to earth. Maddy Mim is her second failed best friend, less infamous than Uma and less powerful. Less willing to fight back. Uma resents but Maddy  _ festers _ , twists her anger in on herself over and over again in an attempt to hide it only for it to eat her alive. 

Mal got along twice as better with Maddy and their friendship lasted twice as long too, but it still crashed and burned just the same. Maddy was too similar, too wild and wicked and chaotic. Too much competition, and Mal always wins because she  _ cheats _ ; she dyes Maddy Mim’s hair turquoise and cuts off her dolls heads, and they start to grow apart. 

Before she left, Mal still thought they were friends. So did half the Isle. But Uma knows what it’s like to be jilted by Maleficent’s daughter, by someone she called  _ friend _ , and over the years she’s seen the hate growing in Maddy like  _ rot.  _

Her hair is purple again, like a poisonous flower that finally bloomed. Her loathing is no longer hidden, shining in her eyes, and displayed openly instead of killing her roots. 

Uma would respect it, if the witch hadn’t brought Ginny Gothel into her Shoppe. 

“Get out,” Uma says, smiling as she matches eyes with Ginny, ignoring the Mad Mime ntirely, “You’re not allowed on the docks, you snooty little witch.”

“I’m with Maddy, and she is,” Ginny says, chin tipped up and hand propped on her hip, like she isn’t pressing her luck just by breathing in Uma’s vicinity, “Besides, I thought you didn’t follow anyone’s rules? Is this Harriet’s turf, now?”

Uma’s molars grind, and it feels like waves crushing rocks. Jonas places a hand on her arm and squeezes, tightly reassuring. Ginny’s one of the oldest kids on the Isle, a former powerhouse and a force to be reckoned with. But her head’s too big, and her pride too large, and one day when they were kids she wanted to drown a rat. 

A  _ wharf _ rat. 

And Harry hadn’t been wearing his red coat. 

But since Harriet banned her from the wharf, the stalls, the barges, she’s been slowly slipping. Loosing her power as they dissolve into grains falling through her fingers and washed away by the tides. Now she’s stuck at Maddy’s beck and call and so are the dregs of her gang. 

Uma hopes the feeling  _ burns _ . She hopes Ginny drowns in it. 

“Harriet’s turf  _ is _ my turf,” Uma tells her, eyes hard, “We all know you’re banned from both,” Uma jerks her head in Maddy’s direction as the girl grins, “Now get out of here before I skewer her and ban you too. You’re supposed to be a witch, Maddy; we don’t go back on our words.”

“Good thing we’re not staying long then,” Mad Maddy’s grin shrinks into a dangerous scowl, and Uma takes a moment to  _ wonder _ what kind of power trip the girl has gone on, with her purple hair and shining eyes. If she’s finally gone as mad as he moniker claims, “Hand over Frollo.”

“No,” Uma says, almost baffled, while Jonas’s shoulders tense like he’s trying to hold back a laugh. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Gonzo stand and press a hand to Claudine’s elbow, and pry a tray from her white knuckled grip, “No, see, why would I do that?”

“Don’t play coy!” Maddy swipes half the food off a nearby table. Uma rolls her eyes at the tantrum. Bonnie starts inching towards the sword check, “She’s a traitor!”

“To who?” Uma raises an eyebrow, “Last I checked she wasn’t in your gang. But then again, last I checked, Anthony Tremaine was.” 

Anthony’s been her second in command for  _ years _ . Ever since Andrew was born and he traded away his old turf because he had no time to maintain it, but still needed the protection of power. 

But now? Ginny Gothel is standing at Maddy’s right and her hair is purple again. Faded and kind of washed out, like the restoration was a home job, and not from Curl Up and Dye. 

Anthony’s always been clever, watches the way the wind blows and abandons ships before it sinks. Uma wonders how big the mess will be when Maddy’s hull is finally breached. 

“He quit!” Maddy’s eyes flare as she hisses, hand landing at the dagger buckled at her side. She doesn’t even draw it before the rest of Uma’s crew is standing, and Bonne tosses two swords from the check and raises her own as the triplets move to bracket both witches in. 

“Uh-uh,” Uma tells her, as Jonas catches both swords and passes one to Uma, which she points under Maddy’s chin, “I thought I told you to leave, Mim.”  _ Stop pushing your luck.  _

Maddy lets go of the dagger, huffing a breath through her mouth and blowing at a strand of hair, “Do you not  _ know _ what happened? Haven’t you heard?” 

“I have better things to do than keep up with the gossip.”

“You haven’t!” Maddy laughs,  _ cackles _ , tossing her head back and perching one hand on her hip. It would be suitably dramatic, but she’s got half a dozen blades pointed at her from all angles, “Listen up,  _ Shrimpy,  _ Mal and her gang came back for a little visit, and little miss Frollo over there was all too happy to help out. The Anti-Hero club over at Dragon Hall? Is filled with pathetic, weak kids who turned their back on the Isle. Who want to be  _ good. _ ”

Uma bristles, furious, and digs her sword tip so deep underneath Maddy Mim’s chin that the witch can’t even speak, less she cut her throat open on Uma’s blade. Uma wishes she would, she wishes Maddy would  _ dare _ . 

“I’m not the weak one!” Claudine blurts out, breaking briefly from Gonzo’s grasp  _ “You are! _ Anthony left your gang because you couldn’t kill Mal. What kind of villain looses five on one?”

“What kind of villain chooses good?” Ginny snaps, speaking up where Maddy can’t, only for Jonas to press his blade against her jugular with a raised eyebrow, “You’re a traitor to everything we stand for.”

“Get out, Mim,” Uma barks, stepping forward and forcing Maddy to move back, “Take your trash with you. I’ll deal with Claudine on my own time. She dealt with me for safety, and that means even from the likes of you,” She grins, baring all her teeth, “So get off my turf, before these floors run red with your blood.”

“You wouldn’t dare—” Maddy says, still blustering, because she’s the oldest of Mim’s granddaughters, the favorite, and the leader of one of the few major gangs still remaining on the Isle. The ocean thrives in chaos, but the Isle has barely finished weathering the coronation’s storm; killing Maddy would only start it up again. 

The witch is earth in all the worst ways; stubborn, thickheaded, foolish. She thinks if she plants her feet, the waves won’t knock her over. 

Uma is a tsunami. Even chained down, she’s more than enough to deal with the Mad Mim.

_ “Out.”  _

Uma slices her blade up, bursting skin from below Maddy’s jaw to the top of her temple, and taking a chunk of purple hair with it. Blood drips down her face; into her eye, gaping mouth, and staining the leather of her jacket. Ginny recoils, Maddy flinches, and Uma  _ laughs. _

“I’m done asking nicely.” 

The double doors swing behind them. Uma turns, pulling a napkin out of her pocket to wipe the blood off her sword before she sheathes it, balling up the paper and letting it fall on the ground next to the strands of Maddy’s hair. 

“One of you clean this mess up,” She orders, stepping forward with a hard smile carved into her cheeks. Gonzo’s grip on Claudine has turned steel, holding her in place even though she hasn’t tried to move, and meets Uma’s eyes with her own, grey like freshly fallen ash, “Claudine and I need to have a little chat.”

She takes the girl by the arm and leads her through the kitchen and out the back door by the alley. Uma shoves Claudine roughly into the deadend, stands between her and the street, one hand on her sword

“Talk,” Uma tells her, smile fading, “I don’t have all day.”

Claudine doesn’t beat around the bush; she’s a small fire, barely a flickering flame and Uma is a wave, tall and rearing and ready to  _ drown.  _

“Yen Sid runs the club,” Claudine admits quietly, “Hadie brought me a month ago. It’s… It was formed after the coronation. For those of us who wanted to choose good instead of evil.”

She flinches a little, at that, but doesn’t shrink her shoulders or press herself any further against the wall. She meets Uma’s eyes, steely, but terrified.

Good. 

Uma slams her hand against the wall and leans in so their faces are mere inches apart. Claudine pinches her eyes shut for a moment, and then reopens them.

“I don’t care if you want to be good, Claudine,” Uma’s voice is low, a hoarse whisper, barely there, “Anyone friends with my little cousin knows that life isn’t as black and white as Isle and Auradon. If being good gets you off the Isle, than that’s all that matters. End of story.”

“What?” Claudine breathes desperately, eyes so wide Uma can see the whites around her iris. 

“Tell me about Mal,” She orders, shifts the subject and rocks back onto her heels and lets her arms fall to her sides, giving Claudine a little more room to breathe, “What exactly happened three days ago?”

“Yen Sid arranged for them to come to the Isle,” Claudine’s voice is shaky, but strong, “I don’t—he didn’t tell us why, but Maddy had been going to all the meetings undercover. She blew it when Mal arrived, shoved her into one of the underground rivers, but the rest of Mal’s gang scared her off and pulled her out.”

“That it?” Uma says, brow furrowed. It angers her, sure, that Mal got to come for a  _ visit _ , tour around their prison while she was sitting vigil at her best friend’s side, but from the way Maddy Mim had been raving—she’d been expecting something more. 

But Mal  _ was _ always good at making people’s blood boil.

“That’s what Maddy knows,” Claudine nods, breaking eye contact and glancing down rubbing at her arms through her sleeves, “But after she left they found this underground cavern. Real close to Hadie’s dad’s home, and Madam Mim was there. And she had her magic.”

“What?” Uma says breathily, taking half a step back, “Magic? On the  _ Isle _ ?”

“Not completely,” Claudine’s tone is turning miserable, now, “The cavern led her out under the barrier. Yen Sid said she’s been sneaking out to Auradon for a month now to wreak havoc, but that they collapsed the tunnel.”

“They—what?” Uma’s at a lose for words, her throat hurts, and it’s like she’s stolen her own voice, “There was a  _ tunnel? _ ”

Uma had spent  _ days _ scouring the caves beneath the Isle. Spread out over two years with a torch in one hand and Hadie’s in the other, getting stuck in nauseating, claustrophobic loops, and there had been a  _ way out.  _

One she hadn’t found. 

“I’m sorry,” Claudine has been with the crew, with Uma, for three months now. She saw the devastation of their magic being given and ripped away, she’s  _ seen _ the escape attempts, all the times Hadie has shown up after school with a flashlight to take her down to the caves to try again, because it was nauseating and claustrophobic and  _ horrible _ but there  _ had _ to be a way out. 

Uma just couldn’t find it. 

_ Madam Mim _ did. And she didn’t even share it with her family, with her granddaughters, with her favorite. 

No wonder Maddy seemed off. Her whole world had been rocked, cracked like a crevice, and she was falling through, Anthony abandoning her before she hits rock bottom. 

“I know you hate Mal,” Claudine continues, as Uma stands, shellshocked with a slack jaw and a painfully tight chest, “But I couldn’t  _ not _ help her when Yen Sid asked. It was  _ right _ and she’s the King’s  _ girlfriend _ , and you  _ said _ they might be getting more of us off!” Uma hasn’t heard Claudine sound this desperate, ever, not even the night Hadie helped her make her deal, where even then she was cool, calm, composed. Now she’s throwing sparks, flaring anxiously. Uma bites her lip and tries to breathe. 

There was a way off. 

And she  _ missed _ it. 

“I’m not going to throw you to the sharks, Claudine,” Uma says hollowly, hand on her sword as she closes her eyes and lets them burn, “We made a deal, and loyalty wasn’t in it. I don’t go back on my word.”

Not even when everyone else does. 

“I didn’t think—I mean, I didn’t want it to be a betrayal. You’ve been—you’ve helped me more than anyone ever has. You’re my best friends cousin.” 

“I’ve told you, I’ve told the crew, I’ve told  _ everyone _ ” Uma says, head beginning to pound in time with her heart, hard and fast, “If you can get off the Isle, than you do it. Suck up to Mal if that’s what it takes.”

“Uma…” Claudine says, like a prayer, like a member of her  _ crew _ , and gods above if that near devotion doesn’t sting, “I don’t—Hadie helped too. We’re not—we’re not loyal to her. To the idea of her, like some of the others. But if we help her—she’s supposed to be good now. She’s supposed to help us back.”

_ Let us go. _

“Mal plays favorites. Until she doesn’t,” Uma blows on, turning on her heels and opening her eyes. Leaving her back wide open in a way that sends goosebumps uncomfortably pricking down her arms, “I don’t care if you helped her. I don’t care if Hadie did either.”

_ She does _ . 

But Claudine takes that as a lifeline, like she’s fallen overboard and Uma’s just tossed her a rope.  _ We’re not—we’re not loyal to her _ , Claudine had said, desperately, like she was saying instead  _ we’re loyal to  _ you _.  _

And Uma—all she can think of is that tunnel. How that could’ve been their way off, her and her crew and every damn kid she could stuff through it before they were caught. Uma’s always known there was a way off, because even the most tight-knit magic has a hole in the weave, and maybe, just  _ maybe _ , the barrier has more than one. 

She needs to go, sit down with a pen and some paper and her cousin, Jonas this time and not Hadie, and see if they can pick through the waterways again to find some kind of weakness, a hole in the weave. 

(Uma’s not so naive to think that they’ll strick gold in the same place twice.)

Claudine is still here though, and Uma isn’t quite sure what to do with her. They made a deal but Uma can break it; Claudine bargained for safety from her, but not safety from  _ her.  _

Uma keeps her word, though, always. It is the one way she is earth; eternal, unmoving, honest. Half her crew emerged from deals like this. She knows loyalty and faith half-formed. Even shaken like this. 

“Take the rest of the afternoon off,” Uma sighs, wearily, turning back and picking at the edges of her nails, glancing up in time to see Claudine’s eyes widen, “I’ll have Gonzo take you back to the ship.”

“I—but—”

“This night’s on the house,” Uma smiles thinly, “Take some time to think. I don’t need anyone else causing a ruckus in the Chip Shoppe because they heard about your club. I’m not kicking you.”

“Oh,” Claudine stutters, “Oh. Thank you. I mean— _ thank you. _ ”

“Stay out here,” Uma tells her, dismissive, numb, rocking back on her heels and taking a few backwards steps towards the alley door, “Gonzo’ll be out in a minute.” 

She moves to pry the door open—hoping against all odds that Gil or Harry is back so they can sit down in one of the booths and she can lean her cheek into her hand and listen as they ramble in a desperate attempt to clear her head or the weight in her chest—but Claudine snakes a hand out and clamps Uma’s wrist in her grasp.

Uma freezes. Turns slowly, hand back on her sword, and Claudine recoils, snaps back and clutches her hand to her chest like she was burned. 

“ _ Uma, _ ” She says, like a wish, like a prayer, “I—I didn’t know about the cavern until after they collapsed it. I would’ve told you otherwise. You would’ve gotten people out.” 

She would’ve. She  _ could’ve.  _

She can’t. 

Uma swallows thickly, and shoves down on the handle, ignoring the pinch in her ears at the rusty squeak. Her silence is heavy in the air between them.

She wants to ask Claudine why she wants to be good, when good can do so much bad. She wants to ask Claudine why she’s trying to hard to be loyal to her, to get Uma to like her.

Why she acts like those two things work with each other instead of against, flows with the tide instead of swimming against it.

Instead Uma says, “I would’ve,” and it sounds like  _ thank you. _

She goes back inside to get Gonzo and the television set is on, muted. Mal stands, smiling awkwardly, with the King’s arm around her as camera’s flash and microphones are held in front of their faces. The King looks at her like she’s the sun, warm and radiant and bright. 

Like he can get close to her without getting burned.

But Mal’s cheeks are round, filled out, full; her clothes aren’t ripped or torn or sewn together by a shaky hand, and her skin is starting to  _ tan _ —envy is a better emotion Uma does not subscribe to, jealousy is something she fervently avoids, but rage crests and crashes in her chest at the sight and she turns the screen off with a violent flick of her finger.

The Anti-Hero club is officially dissolved the next day. 

Two months later, she’s seventeen, and the triplets are turning thirteen. Most years they’ve had their party in the Shoppe or on the dock, but this year Uma’s opened the ship up to them. It’s on a Friday, so she ends up closing the Shoppe early, sending Cook and Claudine off after the lunch shift and quietly shooing out the regular customers. 

She’s taken her apron off and tugged her jacket back on, and is about to leave when the familiar  _ snap _ of her Mother’s tentacles whistles through the air. Uma lunges to the side, startled, and slams into a pillar hard enough to bruise.

“You ungrateful, lazy— _ get back to work!”  _

_ “Mama!” _ She cries out in frustration, but that’s never stopped Ursula before. For all Ursula doesn’t leave the backroom these days, she still seems to have a sixth sense for when someone isn’t working the Shoppe. Her tentacle cracks in the air next to Uma before she pedals backwards through the double doors, one hand clamped over her stinging arm, as her mother swears. 

Opening tomorrow was  _ not _ going to be fun. 

“Uh, you okay?” Uma snaps around, but it’s only Diego de Vil, all awkwardly lanky with a dalmatian spotted party hat sitting lopsided on top of his head. She lets some of the tension drain from her shoulders and drops her hand from the covered bruise. 

“I’m fine,” She tells him, because for the past two months he and the Baduns have been busting tables twice a week in exchange for protection from Maddy Mim’s gang, and she’s now used to his infuriating kindness and concern, “Why are you here?”

“I ditched my last class,” He shrugs, “P.E.’s been hell ever since the Gaston’s tattled to their Dad, so I figured I’d help set up.” And then, almost as an afterthought, like he’s helping her because he  _ wants _ to and not as an obligation, “I owe you.”

“You do,” Uma admits, because if it weren’t for her Maddy would have tried to skin him like one of his aunt’s coats. He’s the least protected of any of the members of that club, already the cousin of a traitor before he became one himself. 

(Uma personally begs to differ on that end. She doesn’t care that he wants a better life for himself, to be the person he wants to be—they  _ all  _ want that. Diego’s only a traitor if he screws them all over to get it.)

He’s not the kind of person who would join her crew, though, and it’s almost a shame considering how well he gets along with Gil. Diego’s the leader of his own mini gang now that Carlos is gone, just him and Harry and Jace. He has his own turf, too, a little carved out section he doesn’t really  _ do _ much on, but puts a nice little gap between Uma’s land and Maddy’s. 

“You want a party hat?” He offers, as they’re walking over to the ship, hands flourishing along the side of his head, “Jace and I got bored in Art a few days ago and made a dozen of ‘em. They’re real cheesy aren’t they? I saw them in one of the Auradon magazines Auntie brings back from the salon.” 

“I already have a hat,” Uma tells him, amused, “I’d look stupid wearing two of them.”

“Oh, right,” Diego says, glancing over at her to eye her tricorn, “I forgot. Well, if you wanna call dibs on the blue one anyway, I’m pretty sure no one has touched it yet. I dropped them off on your ship with Harry.” His brow furrows and he clarifies, “Uh, your Harry. Not mine. He’s got Evil Schemes last.”

Ums hums, dismissive, and Diego doesn’t say more until they’ve arrived at the ship. If she’s being honest, most of the prep work is taking the shiny things out of sight. They’ve moved Lagan and Derelict’s tanks below deck, temporarily, and Uma’s locked the door that leads below deck. Food isn’t hard to score when you work at one of the few restaurants on the Isle, and Uma had the triplets bring it over last night. 

It seems the triplets have ditched their last period too. Morwena waves excitedly at Diego and gestures at the green paper party cap perched on top her twin braids. Morgen has one too, orange and tilted completely to the side so it covers her ears, and it keeps poking Moira as the two of them fiddle the ropes. 

Uma sighs and goes to find Harry so he can dig up his spare dice set since she left their usual one at the dock. 

Morgen, Moira, and Morwena are far more popular at that age then she managed to be—they invited half their class and the orchestra, and Uma watches as dozens of teenagers start spill into the docks and onto her deck before the school day has even ended.

Freddie Facilier brings her younger sister and two of the Tremaines—Anna gifts the triplets a bottle of the nice, expensive conditioner her Mom makes for the salon and Dizzy gives them each a homemade coupon on thick colored paper for a free manicure. 

Moira invited Dizzy, Uma thinks, remembering how they managed to hit it off during the riots, and watching the way her cousin is  _ beaming, _ staring at the coupon and fiddling with the end of one of her short pink dreadlocks with her matching nails. 

The two of them can only stay for half the party, Anna tells her disappointedly. While Anastasia refuses to let any of her kids taken on the Cinderella treatment, Drizella still appears to lack any sort of backbone, so Dizzy has a shift sweeping hair right after the sun sets, and Anna gets to babysit Dexter while she does.

Anthony’s been laying low ever since he broke ties with Maddy Mim, but he still appears to pick up his sister and his cousin when the light begins to turn gold over Auradon. He’s wearing a dark bandana under his bangs and a brand new necklace; a shining number seven glinting over a skull. A streak in his hair has been dyed bold pink: Harriet’s favorite color. 

When their eyes meet he salutes her lazily, his loose smile edging into a grin.

Anna waves as she leaves and Dizzy smiles shyly, avoiding both Harry and Bonnie’s eyeline. Celia and Morgana wave enthusiastically back, and Freddie briefly holds up her hand before she goes back to talking with Harry. 

The two of them—three, if you count Harriet—have been spending more and more free time together. Each day CJ is gone makes it likelier she’s dead, and Harry admitted to her a few weeks ago that he feels like they’re looking for a corpse. 

Uma’s always liked Freddie. She’s the only other VK who really works in deals, and she’s spectacularly talented at weaving words to give lead when people want gold, just like her father. 

Freddie’s earth solid and rock hard. Grounded enough that flighty Callista Jane could never blow her away but as wily and shifty as the shadow magic she can never properly practice and she’s the only person who can truly,  _ really _ keep up with CJ when she wants to.

Before now at least. 

But Harry and Freddie seem content to just laugh, now. To talk about CJ like she’s there, alive, three feet away from them and protesting loudly as they tell stories that poke fun at her, with only a hint of wistfulness in either of their eyes. 

Once the Tremaine’s leave, Morwena and Morgen manage to goad Gil and Gonzo into some semblance of play fighting, not with their swords but with a few of the thin wooden planks they keep around for railing repairs. Gil laughs and taps Morwena lightly on the head with his, dodging out of Gonzo’s strike with the ease of air and using the other end of the wood to smack Morgen lightly on her cheek.

Uma laughs too, and Gil grins down at her from where she’s sitting, playing dice with Hadie, Claudine, and Big Murph, one of the newer additions to Harriet’s crew and a former member of the Anti-Hero club. His distraction costs him, though, and Gonzo smacks him heartily on the shoulder with the broadside of his plank, and Gil yelps, arm reaching to massage the bright red mark.

Things were  _ tense  _ for a while with Claudine. It helped when Hadie dragged Diego and the Baduns to the Shoppe to help them ask for protection, but a thin veneer of a ice was still isolated Claudine as  _ other _ when she almost hadn’t been before. Harry, at least, has stopped shooting her dirty looks ever since she upended his lunch tray on Gaston Jr., that one time he came in and jeered at Uma for protecting the traitors and his weak, runty little brother for following them. 

Once it becomes too dark to see, Uma and Jonas clear out the guests. Hadie is the last to leave, despite spending the whole party in various states of nausea while he stared longingly at the docks. He gives them both a quick hug before he runs off into the dark with a salute. They send Claudine below deck, and light the lanterns, letting the faint yellow glow stretch across the deck.

Then the crew presents their gifts to the triplets. 

Gil gifts each of the girls a jacket, made from the leather reappropriated from Mal’s room and spray painted their favorite colors. Harry gives each of them a sword, sturdy metal with clothe wrapped handles that he probably stole from members of his father’s crew. Jonas hands over grimoires, leather bound and handwritten, filled with spells and potion recipe’s that he’s dug up from their Mother throughout the years. 

By the end the girls are buzzing. They’re her baby cousins, and they’ve lived on the Ship since they were ten, so they’ve always gotten gifts from the crew. But it was small stuff, bits and bobbles and trinkets from the market or the barge. 

This year, though, they’ve gotten big gifts, important gifts, gifts fitting pirates and sea witches. 

Uma steps up to them at last. She places a small button into each of their hands, and closes their fingers over it with a blank face. 

They still feel so young. But Uma was barely a year older than them when she won her ship _.  _ Younger still when she took over the docks. Childhood on the Isle is not comprised of naivete, is not comprised of much at all, and Uma  _ wishes _ she could stretch theirs out longer. 

But they’re thirteen now. Even if she wants to deny them this she couldn’t, can’t; she keeps her word, always. And they helped prove themselves, standing weaponless against Maddy. 

“Swear your loyalty to me,” Uma demands stepping back, and Morwena looks like she’s trying to choke back a smile, “To my name.”

_ “We swear, Uma.”  _ They chorus it at once, melodically, and Moira’s eyes are shining proudly. 

“Open your hands,” Uma says solemnly. They do it, to reveal silver pins with sculpted, curving tentacles emerging from a skull crossed through with a sword and a trident.  _ Her _ symbol, painted over their sails and on the back of her jacket; the symbol of her crew. She, Harry, and Gil have made each pin together over the years by hand. 

Morgen pins hers to the label of her new orange jacket; Moira slides hers around an old, beaded necklace that hangs from her throat; Morwena clips hers to a chain on one of her bracelets.

The crew cheers. Jonas slings an arm around her shoulders, and she remembers when they were four and six, looking over the triplets in their cradle as they slept. 

Her cousin’s cheeks are too shallow and the paint makes their jackets stiff, makes the leather crack. They look so small and thin in the light of the lantern, growth as stunted as their potential. Waves yet to, unable to rise. 

Uma thinks of Mal on the television set for a moment; malnourishment gone and  _ happy _ , eating fresh fruit and not wearing the same clothes day after day. She thinks of Evie and how her skin shins healthily without blemish, Carlos and how he’s sprouted almost four inches since they’ve left, and Jay, whose hair has stopped falling out in clumps. 

Uma  _ wants _ that. For herself, for Harry, for Gil. For her crew, her family, for Jonas and the triplets, and every villain kid who came to their party and everyone who didn’t. She wants it enough to cry, to sob, to fill an ocean with tears big enough to drown everyone who’s ever kept them away from it. 

But for now, Uma breathes, smiles, and spreads her arms. Jonas bends down and the triplets rush them and Uma wraps her arm tight around Morgen’s neck and buries her face into Morwena’s hair.

Nothing good ever comes from the Isle of the Lost. But Uma’s family, her crew, her ship—it’s good  _ enough. _

“Welcome to the  _ Lost Revenge.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 30k words...I swear the next chapter is actually Descendants 2, lol. 
> 
> This chapter is kind of awkward, I think? Just because it was the stuff I couldn't fit in the last chapter and there's nothing super thematic connecting the scenes beyond the fact that I'm exploring Uma's relationship with her crew. 
> 
> We've got some solid huma angst/fluff which is low-key becoming this fic's specialty, ha. Harry's death is really starting to weigh on Uma, and it's definitely gonna affect her motivations/actions in D2. So that's gonna be fun. 
> 
> This chapter partially explores my head canon that literally nobody should've been close friends with Mal after a certain age because of what she did to Uma and Maddy, two of the most powerful girls on the Isle. Like, seriously. Mal does not know how to have healthy relationships outside of D1 (and then only kind of). 
> 
> I brought in the rest of the VK's we'll probably see for this fic (off screen the rest of the Anti-Hero Club are fine just...not as relevant whoops). I ended up really having fun with Diego? Also, living for the idea that he would differentiate between Harry Hook and Harry Badun with "your Harry" and "my Harry." 
> 
> I hope you enjoy Anthony being allowed to Officially Simp for Harriet now lmao, he really used Maddy loosing against Mal as an excuse to join her gang. The reason he wasn't in her gang in the first place is that Mal and Maddy got along before she left and thus being in her gang while living in Mal's territory was safer for him and his family than being in Harriet's gang, especially since she's so openly allied with Uma.
> 
> As usual, I just can't seem to get out all my thoughts about this chapter in the A/N without making it obscenely long, but if you want to hear more (or tell me your own ideas) please comment or message me on tumblr @dragonsarecats 
> 
> I'll be finishing this fic regardless of comments because my motivation is like, insanely strong currently, but I really do appreciate each one and look back on it when I'm struggling! They really help motivate me and just lift my spirits in general so if you can take the time to leave one I'd really appreciate it.
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


End file.
